Skinny Haven Is a Healthful Choice for Every Body

Everyone is so health-conscious nowadays, it’s surprising there aren’t more health food restaurants around. Maybe the reason is just this simple: When people go out for a meal, they want to have a special occasion, eat an extra bite of dessert and so forth.

No problem. There are health-conscious restaurants like Skinny Haven that post nutritional breakdowns along their own private stretch of the information superhighway, so you can toss caution around without actually throwing it to the wind. You can have your, ahem, cake and eat it too.

Skinny Haven is a small chain with franchises in Fullerton and Santa Ana, and don’t call it a diet restaurant, thank you. Managing partner Reza Alavi likes to think of his place as a “healthy place to dine, with something for everybody.” So all the food is low in fat, cholesterol and sodium.

The Santa Ana branch is simple and clean, taken up with an abundance of vinyl booths and one long, well-endowed salad bar. It’s a lively place too. On Friday and Saturday evenings there is entertainment, often singing. Sunday brunch features a string quartet playing Mozart within a bow’s length of the low-fat dressings.

Just inside the door you pass a mini-mart stocked with fat-free tortilla chips, sugar-free candies, flavored rice cakes and heart-healthy cookbooks. “This is what my life has become,” lamented one of my friends as he eyeballed the candies, trying his best to ignore the chocolate mousse banana pie.

How little he knew. According to the restaurant’s data, the mousse pie turns out to be a dessert his diet allows. It is made with artificial sweeteners and low-fat milk solids, two of this kitchen’s favorite tricks for reducing calories.

The usual salads, steamed vegetables and skinless chicken preparations abound on the menu, but more surprises crop up: barbecued short ribs, lasagna, pizza and even veal knackwurst, all reduced in fat content and portion size. The foods are justified by a nutritional sheet listing calories and fat grams that you can pick up at the cashier stand.

Obviously, common sense plays a part. The knackwurst, for instance, is all veal, as opposed to more caloric beef. But it does contain 40 grams of fat, the highest on this menu.

The selection is also quite international. An appetizer called chicken skewers, with its fine sesame dipping sauce, reminds me of the Japanese snack yakitori , though the pieces are completely trimmed of fat. There are chicken nachos, too, made with a fat-free crisp bread and served with a chunky tomato salsa.

Anything made with cheese implies more a liberal calorie allowance, but I particularly like the Skinny Haven quesadilla: a crisp grilled taco shell with fillings like Cajun spiced chicken and yellow cheese. Less worthwhile is the pizza, with its dry oat bran crust.

Most of the main courses are served with a choice of two side dishes: a plain steamed vegetable medley, pasta Alfredo made with a low-fat milk-based Alfredo sauce or a bland rice pilaf. For $1 more, you can take a trip to the salad bar or have a cup of soup. The soups, incidentally, are good and homey. Chicken noodle has an authentic down-home flavor, and sometimes there’s a good, thick three-bean with a cumin-spiked broth.

The knackwurst entree does not conform to the heart-healthy guidelines, but it still manages to be lower in fat and calories than an ordinary hot dog. I like it because it is served on a bed of crunchy sauerkraut (though I wrinkled my nose when the waitress asked me if I wanted low-fat mayonnaise).

The Mexican combo platter includes a chicken enchilada, chili relleno, beef burrito, rice and beans. All the components, save the rather dried-out beans, are tasty--so tasty it’s hard to believe this generous plate contains only 779 calories.

You’ll have to suspend belief even further when you order boneless short ribs. I understand how chicken can be trimmed of fat; it’s harder to imagine nicely marbled short ribs as a low-fat food. Nonetheless, these ribs--tender and juicy under a blanket of barbecue sauce--total 356 calories for a four-ounce portion.

The best sandwich is probably the turkey burger, a flavorful patty on a sesame seed bun with lettuce, tomato and low-fat mayo.

Now for the desserts, which you see on every table here. Black Forest cake is crowned with chocolate sauce, soft-serve ice milk, whipped topping, nuts and even some cherries, but only provides 210 calories.

A creamy peanut butter cake has the loftiest count on the dessert menu: 355 calories. It’s a scoop of real peanut butter in a square of sweet yellow cake, and it was enough to make my diet-conscious friend remark something about a spoonful of peanut butter containing 15 grams of fat.

Spoilsport. Well, there’s always another option--maybe the fudgy brownie or the soft-serve ice cream (a mere 20 calories per ounce in flavors like almond butter toffee, mud pie and vanilla).

Skinny Haven is inexpensive to moderate. Appetizers are $1.95 to $4.95. Main dishes are $3.95 to $6.95. Desserts are $2 to $3.25.

* SKINNY HAVEN

* 3814 Bristol Ave., Santa Ana, (714) 546-4011; also 1019 N. Harbor Blvd., Fullerton, (714) 526-3968.

* Open Monday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday till 8 p.m.

* MasterCard and Visa accepted.