What to Order When You Don’t Want Fried Food

Most of this menu is fried. That is what we do, and nobody arrives here by accident. But there is usually one person at the table who does not want anything that came out of a fryer, and the standard advice — “just get a salad” — is both unhelpful and, on this menu, wrong.

There is more than that, and some of it is better than the fried version.

The salads, and the version worth ordering

Two on the main menu — a House Salad and a Caesar. On their own they are what you would expect.

The version worth knowing about is on the special menus: A13 is a grilled chicken Caesar and A14 is a grilled chicken house salad, both on the weekday all-day list and both on the weekend list. Grilled, not fried, and substantial enough to be a meal rather than a side.

One catch, and it is the reason to read this before ordering rather than after: the salads on the special menus come with a drink only. Every other special includes fries or onion rings; the salads do not. Which is reasonable, but it surprises people.

The wraps

Five of them, and none is fried. They are built with raw onions, lettuce, tomato and a cool cucumber sauce — which makes them the lightest-eating things on the whole menu.

• Gyro Wrap — the traditional one
• Chicken Wrap — the safest order for most people
• Beef Wrap — richer, stands up to a heavier hand with the sauce
• Shrimp Wrap — the lightest of the five
• Veggie Wrap — the same build, no meat

The chicken wrap is also A4 on the weekday special list, and there is a lamb gyro on there as A3. Our explainer on what a gyro actually is goes through the build in more detail.

The griddle, not the fryer

This is the part people miss. Cheesesteaks are not fried. They are cooked on a flat top — sliced ribeye or chicken, chopped as it cooks, with cheese melted through it. Whatever else a cheesesteak is, it did not come out of a fryer.

The distinction is real rather than semantic. Deep-frying cooks food by immersing it in hot fat, which is what gives fried food its coating and its character; a flat top cooks by direct contact with a hot surface and whatever fat the food brings with it. Different method, different result.

Same for the burgers, which are griddled, and for the gyro meat. If the objection is specifically to deep-fried food rather than to substantial food, a large part of this menu is already open to you. Our guide to chicken versus steak Phillys covers the lighter end of that.

The genuinely meat-free options

Worth separating out, because “not fried” and “no meat” are different requests and this menu answers them differently:

The Veggie Philly deserves a mention on its own. It is jalapenos, green peppers, banana peppers and mushrooms with cheese, on the same Amoroso roll — a build in its own right rather than a steak Philly with the beef left out, which is what “veggie” usually means on a menu like this.

What to do about sides

Here is where it gets harder, honestly. The sides menu is almost entirely fried — fries, rings, mozzarella sticks, pickles, okra, mushrooms, corn nuggets. There is no grilled vegetable side and no baked potato.

So the practical options are a salad as the side rather than the main, or accepting that the main carries the meal on its own. A 12-inch wrap or a grilled chicken salad is a full meal without anything next to it, which is more than can be said for a 7-inch anything.

The one nobody thinks of: the seafood boil

This is the genuinely useful answer, and it gets missed because it sits under a heading most people skim past. A seafood boil is not fried at all. Shellfish is cooked in seasoned water, drained, and served in a bag with corn and potatoes — boiled and steamed the whole way through, with no batter anywhere near it.

You choose the seafood by weight, the seasoning and the spice level, with a minimum of two items. Shrimp, snow crab, crawfish, mussels and lobster tail are all on the list. It is the biggest non-fried thing on the menu by some distance, and it is a meal for a table rather than a plate for one person.

The catch is effort. A boil takes both hands and a lot of napkins, so it is the wrong answer if the reason for avoiding fried food is that you want something easy. Our guide to how the boil works covers the ordering in full.

And dessert

Also not fried, and worth knowing about because the obvious alternative on this menu is: the fried donuts, which come ten to a portion and are exactly what they sound like.

Thai rolled ice cream is made to order on a freezing plate rather than cooked at all — ten flavours, each blended and rolled when you order it. If the whole point of the meal was to avoid the fryer, ending it with ten fried doughnuts undoes the exercise. Our explainer on how it is made covers the flavours.

The short version

Grilled chicken Caesar or house salad off the special menus — but expect a drink rather than a side. Five wraps, none of them fried. Cheesesteaks and burgers come off a griddle rather than out of a fryer. And the Veggie Philly is a proper build, not a subtraction. Start on the salad menu or the wraps.

The lighter end of the menu

Two salads, five wraps, and a Veggie Philly that is a build in its own right.

Salads

House and Caesar, plus grilled chicken versions.

Philly Cheesesteaks

Griddled, not fried.

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