Eat, pay, calorie-wise

Eating out has often been a bane for the health conscious folks due to high-calorie foods prepared with generous amounts of cheese, oil, butter and/or sugar. And when it comes to set menus, there's not much one can do besides tuck into the dishes served. Two One Two Bar & Grill has launched a Healthy Lunch Menu last week. What's special about this menu, you may ask? Well, this 'heathy' set menu consists of a soup, salad and a main course, available in vegetarian and non-vegetarian options and which adds up to a total of just 377 calories. This set menu is priced at RS 750, which means that you'll be paying around Rs 2 per calorie!

The Menu
For the soup, there's two options -- Consommé of summer vegetables, chargrilled Portobello mushroom, spring onion or Consommé of chicken, whole-wheat tortellini, chargrilled Portobello mushrooms, spring onion. For salad, Marinated garden green lettuce, Kalamata olives, grilled asparagus, artichokes aged balsamic dressing or Oven roasted chicken marinated tomato. And for the main course the choices are: Chargrilled asparagus, marinated bell peppers, roasted artichoke, sautéed spinach, chilly and roasted garlic vinaigrette or Oven roasted mushrooms, sautéed broccoli, and crusty multigrain baguette, roasted red chilly sauce or Wood fired oven roasted chicken fillet, spicy couscous, and truffle sauce or Pan seared Australian sea bass, sautéed vegetables, grilled asparagus, and black pepper jus.

Chef speak
So what prompted Chef Mikhail Shahani and his team to come with this super healthy menu? "The idea came from the fact that a lot of customers who would come for our regular lunch menu appreciate the food but at the same time lament about the rich food saying that there's too much cheese, butter and cream. That's when the idea occurred to me of why not come up with a healthy menu for my customers. So we began looking up for healthy recipes, nutritional values of foods and incorporated advice from a close friend (he doesn't want to name him) to come with this menu," explains chef Shahani. It took the chef a period of two weeks and a few trial sessions to finalise the menu.

Just 377 calories including a soup, salad and a main course might make make you wonder how tiny the portions must be! Chef Shahani dispells the fears saying the portions aren't miniscule as one might assume but rather are big. In fact, he says some of the customer feedback that he received were that the portion sizes were big.

Enjoy without gaining weight

Chef Shahani is happy that now his customers can savour his food guilt-free. "People often complain that they have to sweat it out extra in the gym after eating my food. In fact, Hrithik Roshan complains saying 'Because of you, I have to work out one hour extra in gym,'" he recounts.

Is there anything else, the chef would like to have included in the healthy lunch menu but couldn't? "Desserts! A dessert contains double the calories than that of the entire lunch. But don't worry about that. I'm working on some healthy dessert recipes, which I can hopefully include on the healthy lunch menu later," pat comes his reply.

WHEN: Ongoing, Monday to Saturday, 12 pm to 3 pm
WHERE: Two One Two Bar & Grill, Dr Annie Besant Road, Worli