How To Make A Plant-Based Meal Possible At Outback Steakhouse

Eating vegetarian or vegan is rarely easy at any chain restaurant, and building a plant-based meal at Outback Steakhouse is just as difficult as you'd expect. The Outback Steakhouse menu completely lacks vegetarian entrees of any kind, with even the few pasta dishes being loaded with shrimp and steak. Unfortunately, if you are eating plant-based all the time, or just trying to for a while, there is always the chance your family or a group of meat-eating friends will drag you there, and you'll have to make do. But don't completely despair. While making a meal at Outback won't be as satisfying as you might like, there are enough plant-based options on different sections of the menu that you can cobble something together, along with taking generous advantage of that free bread.

The best way to eat plant-based at Outback is mixing and matching appetizers and sides, but even there your options are limited. You can't share Outback's signature Bloomin' Onion, because fried items at the steakhouse are made with beef tallow. That also means the "Sydney Shrooms" fried mushrooms are out, as are any french fry dishes, and even the chain's mozzarella stick stand-in "Mozzarella Boomerangs." Thankfully, there is the spinach dip with chips, which isn't vegan but at least doesn't contain any meat as a mix-in or topping. It's not exactly healthy, but given the grim situation at Outback for vegetarians, it's probably your most filling option that could reasonably stand in for an entree

Your best friends as a plant-based eater at Outback are going to the sides. Here you have asparagus, broccoli, mashed potatoes, a roasted sweet potato, and seasoned rice. You could also opt for a loaded baked potato and ask for no bacon. There are also several vegetarian side salads to choose from. The most satisfying would probably be the Blue Cheese Pecan Chopped Salad, which has carrots, red cabbage, green onions, pecans, and something called "Aussie Crunch" with a blue cheese vinaigrette and crumbles. The Caesar salad is unfortunately out of the question because of the dressing, but there is a basic side salad as well, with a choice of a few different dressings. Then there's the blue cheese wedge salad. This could also be a filling option, but make sure you ask for no bacon when you order. If you order a few of these together, you could make a half-decent plant-based meal.

Unfortunately you'll mostly want to avoid Outback's entree salads. The Aussie Cobb is one of our dishes you should avoid ordering at Outback, because it lacks even the basic ingredients of a normal Cobb salad, including not having blue cheese or avocado, so ordering it without the bacon just leaves you with a sad pile of leaves, tomato, hard-boiled eggs (if you eat eggs), and shredded cheese. If you want a full-sized plant based entree, your only real option is ordering the Steakhouse Salad with no steak. Hopefully your Outback team will be generous and make it a little bigger if you do.