Restaurants’ Menus Go on Low-Fat Diet

For years, beef was king at Sizzler steak houses. Diners gorged themselves on large steaks while paintings of cattle hung on the walls.

“It used to be basically steak-and-potatoes land,” said Stacey James, director of menu development for the Los Angeles-based 600-restaurant chain.

Today, the paintings of cattle are long gone. The most popular products introduced in the past two years have been broiled shrimp and broiled chicken breast--without the fatty skin. And the chain built on steaks now says 80% of its customers come in for the salad bar.

From steak houses to gourmet restaurants to fast-food outlets, America’s eateries have changed their menus to hold on to their increasingly health-conscious customers and attract new business as well.

To be sure, restaurant menus are constantly changing. Within the past decade, all sorts of cuisines--Tex-Mex, nouvelle, California, Cajun, home style, and spa--have found their ways into and out of the culinary limelight. Remember quiche and crepes?

Even as these foods have come and gone, one theme remains: an enduring trend toward healthier fare. “Americans are demanding that restaurant foods be healthy,” said Betty Nowlin, a member of the American Dietetic Assn.

And American restaurants are responding with more and different salads, grilled and even skinless chicken, fresh fish and lean beef. They have also taken up cooking with fewer fatty sauces and oils, and many are more receptive to special requests from health-conscious patrons.

“When you ask for the salad dressing served on the side,” said American Heart Assn. Dietitian Denise Rector, “they are not going to be looking at you funny any more.”

Of course, Americans are not dining out on alfalfa sprouts and soy burgers. Rich sauces, hearty portions and confectionery delights of all kinds remain a restaurant standard. “There are a lot of inconsistencies and paradoxes in the food business,” said William G. Norton, a Minneapolis-based restaurant consultant. “People are basically hedonistic. They like to eat. It’s a social occasion. It’s a form of entertainment.”

Concerns about health have been a major force in changing the way Americans eat. When the figures are in for 1987, experts say that per-person consumption of poultry in the United States will have surpassed beef consumption for the first time.

And per-capita consumption of eggs is expected to fall again this year, partly a result of consumers’ quest to cut down on cholesterol.

Menu Variety Important

The people who supply restaurants have also seen a change. Bunge Edible Oils, a major supplier of cooking oils to restaurants, said vegetable oils and shortenings--which have no cholesterol and fewer saturated fats than meat fat--account for 90% of sales, contrasted with 50% a decade ago. “Ten years ago, everybody would fry in meat fat,” said marketing manager Dan O’Connell. “There has been a considerable shift.”

Along with a greater emphasis on health, leaner foods have found their way to mainstream restaurants as a result of efforts to increase menu variety to keep customers from getting bored. “The real issue is menu variety,” said Denny Lynch, spokesman for Wendy’s fast-food chain. “That is what is dictating the actions of the restaurant chains.”

Said Norton: “People get menu fatigue. They don’t want to eat the same thing over and over again.”

The degree of change varies from restaurant to restaurant.

The Marcus Grill & Steak House in downtown Los Angeles added leaner cuts of beef and smaller steaks--6 ounces instead of the traditional 12--for its health-conscious customers. The items have not been runaway best sellers, restaurant owner Stan Marcus said. “But the ones who take it (smaller portions) appreciate it.”

More drastic changes were made at the Century Plaza Hotel’s Garden Pavilion restaurant. The restaurant abandoned continental cuisine in favor of “spa cuisine”-- which features such items as steamed striped bass stuffed with red onions, mushrooms and fennel--and managed to boost sales in the process.

The Garden Pavilion restaurant also lists the ingredients, calories and fat content of some of its menu items--a move most restaurants in general have resisted. Said one industry executive: “Nobody likes to read about lard or animal fat.”

Even fast-food restaurants--loath to change for fear of running off customers--have made menu alterations. McDonald’s carries prepackaged salads. Baked potatoes are now standard at places like Carl’s Jr. Grilled chicken is available at Jack-in-the-Box. And Wendy’s is testing pasta at its Los Angeles-area restaurants.

Restaurants have found that the new menu fare can be profitable. Sizzler has discovered that its salad bar is as profitable as its higher-priced steaks. And, since chicken generally costs less than beef, a restaurant can earn a higher profit on a $7 chicken plate than on a $10 steak, said Janet Lowder, manager of the restaurant consulting group at Laventhol & Horwath.

But shifting menus can be an expensive process. At Sizzler, for instance, a companywide training effort was undertaken to acquaint employees with new items and techniques.

“It’s a tremendous training effort to introduce fresh fish and to cut the steaks differently,” said James of Sizzler. “All of those cooks in all those restaurants need to know how to do all these things.”

At Garden Pavilion, executive chef Raimund Hofmeister has banned cream and butter from the kitchen to eliminate the chances of a harried cook using the fatty ingredients instead of low-fat substitutes. “You can’t trust the cooks,” he said.

There is also some confusion among chefs as to what constitutes low-fat, low-cholesterol foods. Rector, a dietitian with the Los Angeles office of the American Heart Assn., has run across some restaurants that have mistakenly promoted their chicken dishes as “nonfat” after they peeled the skin of the bird. “They are not quite sure what they are doing,” she said.

Nutritionists say the switch to lower-fat ingredients will not affect the taste of most foods--an important consideration for restaurant owners. But some restaurateurs are dubious.

McDonald’s, which uses a combination of beef fat and vegetable shortening to cook its french fries, said a mixture of 100% vegetable shortening would change the taste of the fries.

By switching to vegetable oil from meat fat, “you are eliminating cholesterol but you also lose some flavor,” said Ken Dunkley, director of technical services at San Diego-based Foodmaker, which owns the Jack-in-the-Box chain.

Substitute cholesterol-free margarine for butter? “Over my dead body,” said Ken Frank, owner of La Toque, a French restaurant on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip frequented by entertainment executives. “I never use margarine. It’s inedible. It sticks to the roof of your mouth.”

Customers can also be resistant to the new foods and ingredients.

‘Decadent’ Things Popular

Three years ago, La Toque experimented with a special menu featuring grilled vegetables, chicken salads, grilled and steamed fish. But the new entrees never amounted to 8% of sales and were pulled off the menu after six months, Frank said.

In comparison to the rich cuisine, the new items “all looked very healthy, and, by the same token, very boring,” Frank said. “The most popular things we have are the most decadent things we have.”

At Wendy’s, consumers have rejected alfalfa sprouts, avocados, low-calorie Swiss cheese, tomatoes stuffed with cottage cheese or tuna fish and multigrain hamburger buns.

To attract as many customers as possible, some restaurants have simply increased the size of their menus to make room for new items. At Sizzler, fresh seafood and chicken dishes coexist with steaks and fried shrimp. At the salad bar, customers can choose from fresh fruits to fatty fried potato skins. “People are a little schizophrenic about their diet concerns,” James said.

Many restaurants have also noticed that interest in healthy entrees is stronger at lunch than at dinner time. “People are still rationalizing about their health” at lunch, said John C. Gruner, a Kentwood, Mich.-based restaurant consultant. “At dinner, people reward themselves for being so good the rest of the day.”

Some Ignore Trend

Ironically, while restaurants are selling healthier foods, the industry has shunned health food made popular during the 1960s. “It has been difficult to mass-merchandise health food,” Gruner said. “Nobody has been able to take a health-food restaurant on a national scale.”

Wolfgang Puck, the renowned chef at Spago in West Hollywood, said more restaurants will offer “food that is healthy but not health food. If it was just health-oriented, it would just be beans and grains.”

Some chains have even ignored the trend toward healthy menu items all together. “We do sell quite an amount of fried food,” said Scott Burcham, vice president of marketing for the Bennigan’s restaurant chain. “There is no indication that we have lost any business because of that.”

The limited appeal of health food has made restaurants shy of promoting their leaner menus for fear that they will be confused for a health-food restaurant.

At the El Pollo Loco grilled chicken chain, the menu is dotted with a heart symbol--the seal of approval given by the American Heart Assn. for items low in cholesterol and fat. But in its advertising and promotions, El Pollo Loco promotes taste--not health.

“We emphasize that our food tastes good and it also happens to be good for you,” said Gayle DeBrosse, director of research and development at El Pollo Loco, which has about 80 restaurants primarily in Southern California.

The same holds true at Jack-in-the-Box, recognized as a leader in introducing leaner menu items. Selling items that are low in calories and fat are “not going to cause people to come rushing in to buy,” said Paul Haack, vice president of product marketing for the restaurant chain. “They are still motivated by taste. People are not willing to sacrifice taste and flavor for nutrition.”