Pizza Express

During my time loosing weight the obvious worry has always been eating out with friends and family as this is where you are most likely to have food that is much higher in calories than usual. Well imagine my joy at discovering that a number of leading eateries actually have low calorie menu options and to help even further nearly all have some form of nutritional values list available.

Over the next few evenings I'll be posting about my experiences of eat out but eating healthily. First up is Pizza Express and the good news is that they have nutritional values for their food available online HERE

The next piece of good news is they also have a healthy and low calorie range called Leggera which all have less than 500 calories a portion and to top it offr is the Dolcetti range of mini desserts that you can order with coffee that have less than 100 calories aportion or you can have them as full size desserts and they then have under 200 calories a serving! 

In the Intros it's all pretty good news:

• Olives Marinate: 136 calories per portion
• Olives Nocellara de Belice: 138 calories per portion
• Roasted Tomatoes: 97 calories per portion

For starters there is: the Leggera Panzanella which has 217 calories a serving, this is basically a salad but as always with Pizza Express a very nice one and at least it gives you something to have if the people you are with decide to have a starter.

In the mains there is:

• The Leggera Superfood Salad which you can have with or without chicken. It's 294 calories without chicken or 338 calories with chicken. A word of warning it's a huge portion size, but for so little calories that's a bonus I suppose!

• The Leggera Salmon Salad: this one is 444 calories and is, like the chicken version, big.

A top tip with these mains salads is if you're with one other person you can have half of a salad and half of a normal classic pizza each, so for example if you had a Classic American at 402 per half a pizza you'd be having a total of 571 calories with half of the Superfood Salad with chicken.

Leggera Pizza is one of my favourite things to eat out, it's nice, not a huge portion and most importantly well made. There is a hole cut out of the centre of the very thin pizza base that is then filled with lightly dressed salad. The options are:

• Polo ad Astra: 418 calories per pizza - Chicken, light mozzarella, sweet peppadew peppers, cajun spices, garlic oil, red onions

• Sloppy Giuseppe: 450 calories per pizza - Hot spiced beef, green pepper, red onion, light mozzarella and tomato

• Padana: 415 calories per pizza - Goats cheese, spinach, red & caramelised onions, garlic oil.

• Pomodoro Pesto: 401 calories per pizza - Light mozzarella, marinated santos tomatoes, fresh basil, pesto, garlic oil

• American Hot: 396 calories per pizza - Pepperoni, light mozzarella, tomato with your choice of hot green, roquito or jalapeño peppers

Desserts are also catered for:

• Gluten Free Brownie: 215 calories a portion. Classic brownie recipe using gluten-free flour, topped with fresh strawberry and icing sugar

• Raspberry Sorbet Dolcetti: 86 calories a portion. This is one scoop of sorbet with a chocolate straw and fresh mint.

• Caffe Reale: 191 calories a portion. Figs, cinnamon and white wine spiced syrup, mascarpone

• Lemon Meringue Torta: 185 calories a portion. A mini lemon pastry tart. Lemon curd topped with meringue.

• Lemon Curd Sorbet Dolcetti: 84 calories a portion. This is one scoop of sorbet with a chocolate straw and fresh mint.

• Semi Freddo Reale: 134 calories portion. Gelato dessert with nougat, praline, marsala wine  

• Mini Chocolate Fudge Cake: 251 calories a portion. Topped with fresh strawberry and icing sugar

If you're having the mini desserts don't forget that the calorie counts do not include the coffee!!

So as a complete meal you could have:

• Olives Marinate: 136 calories.
• Glass bottle of Diet Coke: 1 calorie
• Leggera Panzanella: 217 calories.
• Leggera American Hot: 396 calories.
• Americano (no milk): 8 calories
• Raspberry Sorbet Dolcetti: 86 calories.

Giving you a total calorie count of: 844 calories, this may sound a lot until you consider that this is less calories than one Classic Sloppy Giuseppe pizza that weighs in at 952 calories. Also you don't have to have every course!!