Salads at Carl’s Jr. (No Salads Listed at Hardee’s)
Salads are often the mainstay for low carb eaters when eating out, but as usual, watch out for the dressings.
Carl’s Jr. has three meal salads and a side salad on the menu. The best choice is the Grilled Chicken Salad at 10 grams of net carb without croutons. The salad contains a mix of greens plus a little onion and tomato and some cucumber slices. It is topped with chicken and a little cheese.
The side salad is basically a smaller portion of the above salad, minus the onion and chicken.
It has 3 net grams of carb.
The other salads are a different story - the Southwest Grilled Chicken salad has 19 grams net carb and the Cranberry Apple Walnut Grilled Chicken Salad has 21.
Salad Dressings: Best bet is the blue cheese at 1 gram of carbohydrate per packet, or the House dressing at 3. The others go up from there, with the worst being the Raspberry Vinaigrette at 12 grams - that’s a whole tablespoon of sugar (from - you guessed it - high fructose corn syrup).
Breakfast
There is really only one true low-carb breakfast offering. Hardee’s has a Low-Carb Breakfast Bowl, which appears to be eggs mixed with bits of bacon and ham with sausage and cheese on top, for 6 grams of carbohydrate. There’s nothing comparable at Carl’s Jr.
On the other hand, you could get any of the many biscuit or sandwich offerings, which come with eggs, sausage, etc, and ask for them without the bread. Or, even better, ask for those items separately, which could be less expensive.
Beverages
As elsewhere, our choices are water, diet soda, unsweetened hot or iced tea, or coffee.
To sum up, Hardee’s or Carl’s Jr. are not bad places to drop in for a burger on occasion, as you won’t have to muck around awkwardly with a plastic knife and fork in a plastic container. Carl’s Jr. even has a salad with a variety of leafy greens on it. However, as with other fast food restaurants, the choices for those following low-carb eating plans are quite limited.