Macaroni Grill

I tried to do well tonight when I ate out at the Macaroni Grill. The lowest-calorie vegetarian item on the menu was the Capellini Pomodoro (the menu said it is under 600 calories). I have a few questions:

First, is it under 600 calories "per serving" or for the whole plate? The menu didn't specify.

Second, I substituted the Capellini (which is really thin and long like Angel-Hair) for Penne instead. Did that significantly increase the calorie content? I don't know if they measure pasta by weight (which would probably not change the calories) or by just filling the plate (in which case the penne would be many more calories I suspect).

I need to try and get an accurate estimate for my log

(By the way, if anyone cares, I didn't succeed in keeping my meal low-cal, because the medium-sized piece of cake with a super-thin layer of chocolate syrup ended up being 1450 calories! Serves me right for not checking in advance.)

*groans at the cake* I looked up the pasta and all of them said dinner entree for about 644 cals- so whole plate it is. Not sure about the penne substitution though, like you said probably did not make much difference calorie-wise.

The sad thing is the cake was quite dry and not very good. I really wanted the Apple Crispetti instead, because I adooooore it, but I assumed the cake would be fewer calories (turns out the calories are identical). *grumble*

I would assume that the nutritional info was for the entire plate. I love Macaroni Grill, but they are the worst when it comes to finding anything healthy to eat :( Unfortunately, there is one right by my office, so we end up doing a lot of business lunches there....

I've tried their "Skinny Chicken" and it really wasn't very good. So now normally I will get the "Create your own pasta" with whole wheat penne, grilled chicken, spinach and artichokes. It's a huge portion, so I take the rest home and have it for dinner.....and sometimes lunch again the next day :)

oh wow i went there for fathers day and my mothers just HAD to order the chocolate cake! but I limited myself to four bites and avoided the nuts on top. 

but the food i ordered was the skinny chicken, its not that bad..i guess its satisying, but it only has 340 calories for the whole plate so i didnt mess up my day.

I have to be honest I doubt that 600 calories was for the entire serving (especially when a serving is more like a cup of cooked pasta) and resturants tend to give us 3-4 servings per plate (and the serving sizes can vary from resturant to resturant) I guess to help with eating less while out is to order a light broth based soup or salad before your main course and ask for them to box up 1/2 of the pasta dish before they even bring it to you...

I won't worry too much about it now...We all still make those mistakes! (I know I do)