Lunch Favorites

At 1,950 calories this is the heaviest salad on the menu, heavier even than the Chicken Parmesan Pizza Style, which is a breaded chicken breast under melted cheese with Alfredo pasta on the side.

Chicken, avocado, tomato, grilled corn, black beans, cucumber and romaine are tossed in barbecue ranch dressing. Then come the crispy fried onion strings, lots of them. 124 grams of fat.

It does have 22 grams of fiber, tied for the most on the whole menu. Get the dressing on the side, and ask for half the onion strings.

Roberta's in Brooklyn made the bee sting pizza famous, hot chilli and honey over cured pork, and this flatbread takes the idea and adds more meat to it.

Italian sausage, pepperoni, bacon and Calabrian chiles go on with mozzarella, vodka sauce and parmesan. Honey finishes it. The sweetness is what makes three salty meats work together.

1,170 calories, tied with the Pepperoni for the heaviest flatbread. 3,280 mg of sodium.

114 grams of fat. That's 30 more than the Grilled Salmon, from the same fish.

Blackening was popularised by the New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme in the 1980s: the fillet is coated in butter and spice and seared in a very hot cast-iron pan until the crust chars.

Add a Creole sauce, mashed potatoes and buttered corn and the plate reaches 1,570 calories, the second-heaviest in the seafood section. The allergen list stops at milk and fish. No gluten.

The adult Cheese Flatbread and the Kids' Cheese Flatbread have identical published figures. 1,000 calories and 2,530 mg of sodium, each.

Either the portions are the same or the data repeats itself, and I can't tell you which, but if you're ordering for a child it's worth knowing the kids' version isn't a smaller meal on paper.

Mozzarella, fontina and parmesan over tomato sauce, no toppings. Vegetarian. 49 grams of protein.

This chicken dish lists fish among its allergens. A classic piccata is lemon, butter, capers and white wine with no fish at all, and the menu doesn't say which ingredient adds it, so if you avoid fish, ask before ordering.

The plate itself is one of the better-judged ones here.

1,420 calories with 79 grams of protein. Compare the Spicy Rigatoni Vodka at 1,570 calories and 34 grams and you can see which one feeds you. Capers are pickled flower buds, and they do the same job as the lemon, cutting through the butter. I'd eat around a lot on a plate, but not those. Sodium is 2,920 mg.

Tree nuts. Almonds through the salad, listed in the allergens, and nothing in the name suggests it — this is one of seven salads here that contain nuts, and people ordering a salad tend not to check. 102 grams of fat and 1,630 calories, which puts it above the Carne Asada Steak. The dressing and the fried wonton strips account for most of that; the lettuce underneath doesn't offset any of it.

50 grams of protein and 2,960 mg of sodium. It's a good salad. It just isn't a light lunch, and the section it sits in encourages you to think it is.

30 grams of carbohydrate with 66 grams of protein. On a menu where almost everything comes with pasta, rice or fries, that ratio is genuinely hard to find — only the California Omelette, the Buffalo Wings and the Tuscan Chicken beat it.

The catch is fat: 124 grams, from the bacon, egg, blue cheese, avocado and dressing. 1,480 calories total, and 2,460 mg of sodium. So it's low-carb rather than low-calorie, and those aren't the same thing. If you're eating that way deliberately this is one of the best orders in the building. If you picked it because it says salad, the numbers will surprise you.

Ask for the dressing on the side. It's the single change that moves this plate most.

107 grams of protein, third-highest on the entire menu behind only the Chicken Parmesan and the Buffalo Wings, and it does it at 1,800 calories. Several pastas here cost more calories and give you half that. Romano and parmesan are both hard aged cheeses, high in salt and low in moisture, which is why crusting chicken in them browns into a shell rather than going soft the way breadcrumbs do. The tomato-herb sauce underneath is deliberately thin. It's there to stop the cheese running the whole plate.

That cheese costs you 4,420 mg of sodium — close to twice a day. If you track salt, plan the rest of the day around this rather than skipping it, because on protein there's almost nothing better here.

Vegetarian, 1,270 calories and 29 grams of protein, which gives it the second-worst protein-to-calorie ratio of any adult pasta here, after the Spicy Rigatoni Vodka.

Penne comes tossed with broccoli, asparagus, courgette, peppers and basil in olive oil and a light tomato sauce. It's a vegetable-led plate, not a cream pasta with vegetables stirred in. Sodium is 2,520 mg, gentle by the standards of this section.

As a light vegetarian dinner it works. As a main, add a starter with some protein in it.

5,100 mg of sodium, fourth-highest on the whole menu, and 1,930 calories, which puts this comfort dish ahead of every steak on offer.

Fish is also on the allergen list. Worcestershire sauce is a standard meatloaf seasoning and it's made with anchovies, which is the likeliest explanation, though the menu doesn't confirm it. Ask if fish matters to you.

Mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, grilled onions and buttered corn come with it. It's two meals.

Roasting is what the garlic is there for. Raw, it's sharp and aggressive, but after an hour in the oven the sugars caramelise and a whole clove goes soft and sweet enough to spread on bread.

Those cloves go into the cream sauce whole, over bowtie pasta with chicken. 1,870 calories, 95 grams of protein, 4,130 mg of sodium. That sodium is close to double a day's limit. It's heavy, though the Louisiana Chicken Pasta still outweighs it by 400 calories.

For the same flavour family lighter, the Pasta Da Vinci is 330 calories down and carries about 1,750 mg less sodium.

Alfredo di Lelio's original, served in Rome from around 1914, had no cream at all: fresh fettuccine, butter and parmesan, tossed at the table until the cheese melted into a sauce.

Hollywood made it famous. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford ate it on their 1920 honeymoon in Rome and brought the dish's name home with them, and the American version grew a cream sauce along the way.

The Cheesecake Factory's is a rich parmesan cream sauce. 78 grams of saturated fat, nearly four days of the FDA's 20-gram daily value. Vegetarian, 1,930 calories.

Adding chicken to the Fettuccini Alfredo costs $4 and 190 calories and gives you 41 more grams of protein, which is the best trade on this particular plate.

It doesn't fix the rest. 2,120 calories, tied with the Bruléed French Toast for fourth-heaviest on the whole menu. The 78 grams of saturated fat stay exactly where they were.

91 grams of protein. Take half home before you start.

$2 more than the chicken version. 19 fewer grams of protein.

Shrimp adds 120 calories and 22 grams of protein to the plain Fettuccini Alfredo, where chicken adds 190 calories and 41 grams, so per calorie the chicken is the better protein buy even before the price.

2,050 calories. Crustacean shellfish joins gluten, milk, eggs and wheat on the allergen list. Order it for the shrimp, not the numbers.

The heaviest plate in the seafood section: 1,930 calories, 115 grams of fat and 3,580 mg of sodium, first on all three counts.

Fried fish and chips were being sold together in London by the 1860s, and Joseph Malin's shop in the East End is the name most histories give as the first. The formula hasn't moved much. Here the fish is hand-battered and fried crisp, with fries, coleslaw and tartar sauce.

A side order of fries on this menu is 1,060 calories by itself, so the fries are where I'd leave some behind. 79 grams of protein.

At 1,280 calories it's among the lighter pastas here, and it's vegetarian, which makes it the obvious pick for a meat-free table.

The sodium undoes some of that.

4,110 mg. That's close to twice a day's limit. Cheese is salt-cured, and four of them baked into one dish add up fast. People assume the calorie saving carries over to the salt. It doesn't. Mozzarella gives the pull, ricotta the softness, and romano and parmesan the sharp edge, all baked into marinara with basil.

It's baked rather than sauced. Gluten, wheat and milk are listed, so it suits vegetarians and not a dairy-free guest.

It's the Margherita with more cheese. Fontina and parmesan join the mozzarella, and that adds 90 calories and 530 mg of sodium.

Fontina comes from the Aosta Valley in the Italian Alps, a mountain cheese that melts smooth and tastes faintly of nuts, and parmesan brings the salt, which is why this lands at 2,300 mg where the Margherita sits at 1,770.

84 grams of carbohydrate, the fewest of the seven flatbreads. Vegetarian. I'd order it over the Margherita for the fontina alone.

The lunch salmon costs $8 less than the dinner Grilled Salmon, $19.95 against $27.95, and on the nutrition sheet it's heavier: 1,330 calories to 1,270.

The fish isn't where the difference sits. This plate shows 86 grams of carbohydrate and 25 grams of sugar, against 64 and 5 on the dinner plate, which points to different sides rather than a bigger fillet. Protein is almost level, 63 grams to 62.

Milk, eggs and fish are listed. No gluten. At that price, it's the better buy of the two.

Sam Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant running a restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, put pineapple on a pizza in 1962, so the Hawaiian is Canadian, and people have argued about it ever since.

This version is sold at the Hawaii restaurants. Canadian bacon, ham, fresh pineapple and red onion go over red pizza sauce and mozzarella. 960 calories.

54 grams of protein and 2,870 mg of sodium. I'm on the pineapple side of the argument.

The crust brings gluten. The Grilled Salmon has none.

Beurre blanc is butter whisked into a reduction of white wine and shallots until it emulsifies into a sauce, and it's rich by definition, so with the crust on top this plate reaches 93 grams of fat and 1,350 calories.

Asparagus and mashed potatoes come alongside. 64 grams of protein. Sodium is 1,620 mg, the second-lowest in the seafood section.

65 grams of protein, the most of the seven flatbreads. It's one of the Hawaii-only items.

Kalua pork is traditionally cooked whole in an imu, an underground oven lined with hot stones and banana leaves, until it shreds, and here it goes on the flatbread with red onion, red bell pepper, pineapple and mozzarella and no tomato sauce.

1,100 calories. 2,490 mg of sodium. If you're in Honolulu, order this over the Hawaiian.

4,660 mg of sodium. Double the daily maximum in one bowl, and that's only the fourth-highest pasta here — Spaghetti and Meatballs runs 5,550.

The calories reach 2,270, third-highest of anything on the menu. It's built to stack salt: parmesan crust on the cutlets, cream sauce underneath, Cajun seasoning through the peppers and onion. Three salted components, layered rather than balanced. You get 98 grams of protein for it, so this isn't empty weight. It'll feed two people properly.

One thing that catches people: fish is in the allergen list. Most cream pastas here aren't, and nothing about parmesan-crusted chicken suggests otherwise.

Of the seven flatbreads, this one is lightest on calories, fat and sodium alike, with 760 calories, 30 grams of fat and 1,770 mg of salt.

Fresh mozzarella, basil and tomato sauce. The popular story says a Naples pizzaiolo named Raffaele Esposito made it in 1889 for Queen Margherita, in the colours of the Italian flag. Historians doubt the details.

34 grams of protein. Vegetarian.

1,430 mg of sodium, which sounds like a lot until you compare it to the rest of this menu — it's less than half what the Louisiana Chicken Pasta does and about a fifth of the Buffalo Blasts.

Miso is fermented soybean paste, and fermenting is what gives the glaze that dark savoury depth without needing much sugar. It also means soy is in the allergen list alongside fish and milk. 1,340 calories, 64 grams of protein. On a menu where the healthy-sounding options frequently aren't, this one holds up to the numbers.

Order it if the rest of the table is having something enormous and you'd rather not.

233 grams of carbohydrate, exactly the same as Linda's Fudge Cake. A chicken dinner and a chocolate layer cake, level.

The reason is the glaze and the rice underneath rather than the chicken. Battered, fried, coated in a sweet citrus sauce — sugar is doing structural work here, not just seasoning. 1,750 calories, 52 grams of protein, 2,730 mg of sodium. Gluten, wheat, soy and sesame are listed. No dairy, no egg, which is unusual for something fried on this menu.

139 grams of fat, third-highest on the menu. 2,030 calories.

Real carbonara has no cream in it — egg yolk, hard cheese and pasta water emulsify into a sauce, and that's the whole technique. This is the cream version, which is what almost every restaurant outside Rome serves, and there's no point pretending otherwise. It's rich in a different way. Heavier, more forgiving, less likely to split.

Bacon rather than guanciale, again the American convention. 50 grams of protein, 3,480 mg of sodium, and gluten, wheat and milk on the allergen list.

Split it or take half home. Eaten alone, that's 61 grams past the FDA's daily value for fat.

I send people here when they want the Madeira sauce without the damage.

It's the same reduced fortified wine as the Chicken Madeira, at 1,540 calories and 2,380 mg of sodium, which is about half the salt in the Louisiana Chicken Pasta. Reducing Madeira burns off the alcohol and concentrates the sugar. That's the faintly caramelised edge. Caramelised onions push the same direction, and the mushrooms pull the whole thing back toward savoury before it gets sweet.

Gluten, wheat and milk are listed, and nothing else. With 71 grams of protein it's a proper main, so if the pastas here usually beat you, start with this one.

At 5,090 mg of sodium it's the fifth-saltiest dish on the whole menu, and both proteins arrive already seasoned, since Italian sausage is salted and spiced before it ever meets the pan.

Rigatoni, shrimp, sausage, onions and mildly spicy peppers are tossed in marinara with fresh basil. The ridges on rigatoni are there to hold a chunky sauce. This is the right shape for it.

1,780 calories and 68 grams of protein. Drink water with it.

The adult Pepperoni Flatbread is 1,170 calories. The Kids' Pepperoni Flatbread is 990.

That's only 180 calories apart, so the children's version isn't much of a smaller meal, and the salt gap is 710 mg, with this one at 3,430, the saltiest of the seven flatbreads.

Pepperoni is an Italian-American invention, first recorded in New York around 1919. It curls into cups as it cooks because the casing shrinks faster than the meat. 66 grams of fat.

The menu lists the half sandwich alone at 850 calories, then adds a cup of soup at 310 to 390 and a small green salad at 260, so the whole lunch lands between 1,420 and 1,500.

That's a lot for a half. The full Chicken Salad Sandwich is 1,180. A half-portion at 72% of the whole doesn't add up as a simple halving.

Tree nuts and fish are both listed. Swap the green salad for a Caesar and you add 180 calories for $1.

790 calories for half a turkey sandwich. That's before the cup of soup and the small green salad that come with it.

Add the soup at 310 to 390 calories and the salad at 260, and this lunch comes to 1,360 to 1,440, heavier than the whole triple-decker turkey sandwich in The Club, at 1,290 before its side.

32 grams of protein in the half sandwich. No fish or tree nuts, unlike the chicken-almond version. $17.95.

This salad contains peanuts, and it's one of only three salads on the menu that do.

Nothing in the name suggests it. The second surprise is size: 1,670 calories and 112 grams of fat, more calories than the Grilled Rib-Eye Steak. Chicken, avocado, cheese, tortilla strips and dressing all stack on top of each other. The lettuce doesn't offset any of it.

It's still a good plate, with 68 grams of protein and proper Southwest flavours. Order it as a full meal, because that's what it is.

124 grams of fat, and only 16 of them are saturated. The Fettuccini Alfredo carries almost the same total, 128 grams, with 78 saturated.

Avocado, cashews and a citrus-honey-peanut vinaigrette explain it. Those fats come from plants and nuts, not butter and cream. Chicken, mixed greens, crisp tortilla strips, carrots and cilantro fill out the bowl.

It's still 1,820 calories, second only to the Barbeque Ranch Chicken Salad among the salads, and with peanuts and tree nuts both listed, but no milk or egg, it suits a dairy-free diner with no nut allergy.

Milk is the only allergen on this dish. No gluten, no wheat, no egg, no soy, no nuts — and on a menu where almost everything lists five things, that's remarkable enough to be the reason to order it. Ground beef and vegetables under mashed potato, 1,400 calories, 74 grams of protein. Sodium runs 3,290 mg, which is the real cost.

Strictly a shepherd's pie is lamb and a cottage pie is beef. Almost nobody outside Britain observes that, and the kitchen here doesn't either. It's beef.

570 calories and $12.50 make this the lightest and the cheapest of the 28 lunch favorites, and nothing else in that section comes within 200 calories of it.

The soup changes. Renee's Special lists a cup at 310 to 390 calories. So one fixed figure can only be approximate.

Gluten, milk and wheat are listed. Ask for a broth-based soup if you're here for the lightness.

5,550 mg of sodium, the second-highest figure on the entire menu, beaten only by the Buffalo Blasts.

That's close to two and a half days of salt. The meatballs account for part of it, because they're made with Italian sausage and parmesan as well as beef. Tomato sauce adds more.

1,920 calories, 179 grams of carbohydrate. Split it, and keep the starter light.

Chipotle is a smoked, dried jalapeño, and smoking is what separates this from every other cream pasta on the menu. You get heat, but it arrives late and low rather than sharp. That's the whole appeal. It runs 1,770 calories and 3,230 mg of sodium, which is heavy but not the worst here — the Farfalle with Chicken and Roasted Garlic beats it on both counts. The 67 grams of protein come from the grilled chicken, and the asparagus and peppers do more work than you'd expect, because they're the only things breaking up the cream.

Gluten, wheat and milk are the only allergens listed. No egg, no nuts, no fish. For a dish this loaded that's a genuinely short list, and it makes this one of the easier pastas to order for a table with restrictions.

I'd order something else. Of every adult pasta here, this one gives you the least protein for the calories, 34 grams against 1,570, which puts it dead last.

Vodka's job in the sauce is mostly structural. It keeps the cream from splitting as the sauce reduces, and most of the alcohol cooks off. The sauce is genuinely good. Its texture is what you're paying for.

There's no meat in it, though, and 4,470 mg of sodium, so add grilled chicken or take the Cajun Jambalaya Pasta, which is 300 calories lighter with 83 grams of protein.

Vegan, which on this menu is rare enough to matter. It's also 89 grams of fat, about 76% of its 1,060 calories, from the almonds, pepitas, avocado and vinaigrette.

Protein is only 16 grams. White beans, quinoa and farro are all in there and still don't get you close to what a chicken salad delivers, so this eats more like a large side than a main. Farro contains gluten and the almonds are tree nuts, both listed. Asparagus, beets, green beans, tomato, cucumber and carrot fill the rest of the bowl.