HEALTHY EATING OUT:Menus provide little in the way of nutritional information, leaving health-conscious diners in the dark about their options. Eamonn O'Reilly is one chef who is leading the way in making fine dining an option for his calorie conscious customers, writes CONOR POPE
IF YOU ARE brave, romantic and/or thick enough to have booked a restaurant for tonight, you will hopefully be so loved-up that you’ll not spare a thought for the calorie count of the “special” Valentine’s Day menu. Incidentally, it’s “special” because it costs way more than the regular Monday night menu.
Even if calories are on your mind, there’ll be no point looking at the menu to see what is good or bad because, unlike almost all the food we consume in our homes, when it comes to what we eat in restaurants, there is a complete information vacuum.
The times are a changing however and a growing number of top class restaurants have started to see that consumers actually want to be better informed about what they are eating and are using extra information to give them an edge over competitors.
Bay in Clontarf on Dublin’s northside was one of the first out of the blocks and its menus, which were revamped late last year, now carry quite a dizzying array of information about the nutritional value of the food. Not long ago, Pricewatch visited Bay fully intending to have a fry, but after we learned that it would see us consuming in excess of 1,500 calories, we turned our attention to the healthy option – which had a lot less fried meat and a lot more poached eggs. It also had closer to 500 calories and was, by our reckoning, a whole lot nicer too.
Eamon O’Reilly of One Pico in Dublin is one of the country’s most well-regarded chefs and he is another person who is leading the charge towards more informative menus, partially out of self-interest. “I have my own health problems and would love to go to restaurants and be given the option of eating well without feeling guilty about it the following day,” he says.
With that in mind, he is introducing big changes to his menus in the weeks ahead. Some 70 per cent of the menu will remain as is, while 30 per cent will be modified to reflect a move towards healthier options. Signposting of what is in the dishes being served will also become a feature.
Effectively there will be three starters, mains and desserts that are devised to be lower in fat, salt and calories.
“Whether this will have legs, I don’t know but I am going to give it a bash.” He says that he is currently on a diet and feels that, as one of the country’s most well-known chefs, he can’t go into a restaurant and order a green salad and a piece of unadorned chicken. “They would look at me as if I had two heads.” His solution is not to go out.
“A lot of people come to restaurants and order a green salad, or their mains with the sauce on the side, and a lot of chefs and waiting staff take this as a indication that the person knows nothing about food, but that is not it at all,” he stresses.
“I don’t think you can have an exact calorie count in a restaurant that offers a fine dining experience but what we are going to try and do is offer a calorie range and make a commitment that a particular dish will not go above that range and in a percentage of our meals we will not use salt or butter or cream. Once it is not done it a preachy manner, and it is not going to negatively impact on a night out I think it will work.
It seems like a long time ago since Dylan McGrath was the enfant terrible of the Irish restaurant world winning a Michelin star for Mint, his Ranelagh restaurant in almost record time. While Mint’s star burned bright, it did not burn for long and after it closed in 2008, McGrath disappeared off the scene for a while before returning last year to open the Rustic Stone in Dublin.
One of the notable things about the Rustic Stone – apart from the fact that many of the dishes have to be cooked by the diners – is a menu which clearly highlights the healthy options. McGrath says he took a deliberate decision to include items on the menu that cater for people with specific dietary restrictions, but also include burgers and high-fat, high calorie pork ragu dishes. “In a recession like the one we are living through, it is all about giving people choices,” he says.
“With healthy food, the trick is not to bore people,” he continues. “Most healthy food options are boring. But to be successful and popular among diners you need to give them options that are as tasty as they are fun.”
He says it is “a brave new world out there on the restaurant scene. Our customers are more body conscious than any other generation. We are at the tipping point of making changes that will have a positive influence on people’s health and their interest in eating out.”
Nutritionist Paula Mee believes restaurants need to be more transparent. “Menus don’t tell people how the food is prepared or what is included among the ingredients, so for diners it is a guessing game, a lottery, particularly for people with health concerns,” she says.
It is, she believes a serious problem, because the country is facing into a chronic obesity problem. The figures are alarming. Some 23 per cent of Irish adults are obese – the second worst obesity rate in the EU – and one in every two adults are overweight.
This leads, she says, to 2,000 premature deaths annually and costs the health service €4 billion. “You can chose what you think are the healthy options in a restaurant, things like soup and sushi, but you can actually be eating badly.”
To demonstrate what can be achieved, O’Reilly prepared a lunch menu heavy with superfoods and low in salt, sugar and fat last week. Among the starters were seared red mullet, escabeche and shaved fennel salad (150 calories) and a crab salad with créme fraiche and pink grapefruit (120 calories). Main courses included braised short rib of beef terrine (250 calories) and free-range Fermanagh chicken, leek and black back croquette and a fricassee of salsify, shitake and spring onions (200 calories). For dessert, there was a natural yoghurt and vanilla pannacotta (135 calories) and winter berry and champagne jelly (100 calories).
Even by picking the highest calories options, the three course amounted to 535 calories – or less than a quarter of an adult’s recommended daily calorie intake.
The One Pico menu change will be rolled out next week and comes as Unliever Food Solutions, a large supplier of ingredients to the Irish catering trade, published details of a global study which highlighted a desire among consumers for more nutritional information on menus. While the World Menu Report did not include Ireland, it reflects trends which are mirrored in this country.
It shows that 87 per cent of consumers said they would make healthier choices when eating out if they were provided with nutritional values. Two thirds said food labels focussing on fat content, salt content and calorie count would be a welcome addition to a menu.
The study also found that the majority of those polled in seven countries believed it was chefs and restaurant operators who needed to take the lead in providing better nutritional information on menus. With the information in place, consumers will be able to make genuinely informed choices, whether they make the right ones, will be up to them.
