At Cactus Club Cafe, the easiest keto order is an à la carte steak — 8oz CAB sirloin, 14oz CAB ribeye, or the Peppercorn Steak — with vegetables swapped in for the buttered mashed potato that comes with it by default. If you'd rather skip red meat, the Green Goddess Salad with the dressing on the side is the next-best pick. What to steer away from: the rice-based bowls (Med Bowl, Tuna Poke, Crispy Tofu, Teriyaki Chicken) and the Start & Share plates, where the carbs on this menu actually concentrate.
Why the steaks are the clean part of this menu
Cactus Club's à la carte steaks are listed as coming with buttered mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables as the default pairing, the same two-sided structure a lot of steakhouse-adjacent menus use — one starchy side, one not, both already built into how the kitchen plates the dish. That means asking for vegetables instead of the mashed potato isn't a special request, it's picking the half of a standard pairing that already exists. The steak itself needs nothing done to it: a grilled cut of Certified Angus Beef doesn't carry carbohydrate on its own, so the cut is a taste-and-budget decision, not a diet one.
Steak Frites is the one steak order worth pausing on, because its sides aren't the usual potato-or-vegetable choice — it's typically plated with a kale salad, horseradish cream, and sea salted fries as a set. The steak is still fine; it's the fries sitting next to it that aren't. Since this dish isn't built around an obvious swap the way the à la carte steaks are, the simpler move is just leaving the fries alone or asking for extra kale salad, rather than assuming the kitchen will substitute a side that isn't on the dish's own list.
Where this menu gets harder is the bowls, and it's worth understanding why before you order one. A burger's carbs are mostly in one removable piece — the bun — which is why "no bun" works as a quick fix almost everywhere. A rice bowl doesn't have that same clean separation: the rice is the base the whole dish is built on, not a side sitting next to the protein. The Med Bowl, Tuna Poke Bowl, and Crispy Tofu Bowl are each built on a rice base (turmeric rice for the Med Bowl, jasmine rice for the other two), with vegetables, protein, and sauce layered over it. You can pick around the rice at the table, but it's a messier fix than a swap, and the bowl was portioned assuming the rice is there. The Teriyaki Chicken Rice Bowl adds a second issue on top of that: teriyaki is a sweet glaze, not just a seasoning, so even setting the rice aside doesn't fully solve that dish.
What to actually order
An à la carte steak — 8oz CAB sirloin, 14oz CAB ribeye, or Peppercorn Steak — with vegetables instead of the mashed potato. This is the one swap on the menu that's closest to a default option rather than a special ask.
The Green Goddess Salad, dressing on the side. Avocado, egg, and feta make up most of the bulk here, and holding the dressing back lets you control how much of it — and whatever sugar is in the recipe — actually lands on the plate.
Szechuan Lettuce Wraps as a starter, if you want one. Lettuce-wrapped starters tend to be the safer end of a shareables menu; ask what's in the filling and sauce before ordering, since recipes vary and this chain doesn't publish one you can check in advance.
Black coffee, soda water, or an unsweetened drink, the same default that works across most sit-down chains.
What to skip or ask about
Buttered mashed potato as the default steak side. It's the easiest thing on this menu to swap out, so there's no reason to eat it by habit.
The rice-based bowls — Med Bowl, Tuna Poke Bowl, Crispy Tofu Bowl, Teriyaki Chicken Rice Bowl. The rice is structural, not a side you can wave off, and the teriyaki bowl adds sugar on top of it.
Truffle Fries and other Start & Share plates built around fried starch. These are shareables for a reason — easy to eat a lot of without quite noticing, since no one plate is "yours."
Six Layer Chocolate Slice and other desserts "made to share." The sharing framing doesn't change what's in a slice of layered chocolate cake.
None of this requires reworking the order. It's one swap at the steak, a dressing held on the side if you go with the salad, and treating the bowls as a different category of dish rather than a protein-plus-vegetables plate with extra rice on it.
Cactus Club doesn't publish a public nutrition or ingredient breakdown by menu item, so this piece sticks to categories — potato versus vegetables, rice-based bowl versus protein-and-salad plate, dressing on versus off — rather than numbers it can't verify. Menu items and sides can vary by location and change over time; nutrition info checked 2026-10 against publicly listed menu descriptions, since the chain's own site did not have a reachable nutrition page at the time of writing.
An à la carte steak — the 8oz CAB sirloin, 14oz CAB ribeye, or Peppercorn Steak — with vegetables in place of the buttered mashed potato that comes standard, or the Green Goddess Salad with the dressing on the side. Both sit outside the rice-and-shareables part of the menu where most of the carbs are.
Is the Steak Frites a safe order?
Only if you treat the fries as optional. Steak Frites comes plated with a kale salad, horseradish cream, and sea salted fries as the default sides — the steak itself is fine, but the fries are straightforward starch. Asking for extra kale salad in place of the fries, or just leaving them, is the easier fix than hoping the kitchen swaps a fry order on a dish built around them.
Are the bowls at Cactus Club keto-friendly?
Not as served. The Med Bowl, Tuna Poke Bowl, and Crispy Tofu Bowl are all built on a rice base — turmeric rice for the Med Bowl, jasmine rice for the other two — with the protein and toppings sitting on top of it rather than replacing it. The Teriyaki Chicken Rice Bowl adds a sweet glaze on top of that same rice base. None of these are an easy ask-for-no-rice fix the way a burger's bun is, since the rice is doing more of the structural work in the bowl.
What about the Green Goddess Salad — is it actually low-carb?
It's the better bet among the salads on this menu. It's built around avocado, tomato, Macedonian feta, spicy pecans, and egg, with the dressing served on the side by default. Avocado and egg add almost no carbs, and pecans and feta are modest in the quantities a salad topping usually comes in — the dressing itself is the one variable worth asking about if you want to be careful, since a creamy green goddess dressing can lean on sugar depending on the recipe.