Can You Eat Healthy at a Bowling Alley?

I found myself last October wondering if I would be able to get anything I can eat in my restricted diet at a bowling alley. I had bowled on an office team last spring that won our league championship and the team was planning a reunion night out of bowling. We were going to a different place than we had bowled at previously, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to eat anything there.

While I looked forward to seeing the team together again, I was worried I’d be watching everyone else drink beer and eat pizza. But luckily, the place we were going, Chicago’s Diversey River Bowl, was big enough to have put its restaurant menu on its Web site, so I checked ahead of time to see what I would settle for, imagining a dull salad or maybe yet another chicken breast.

So imagine my surprise to find a bison burger on the menu! Bison is much leaner than beef. The menu did have the expected chicken breast sandwich and some salads that didn’t sound all that dull, assuming I brought my own oil and vinegar instead of using the dressings suggested.

I gladly ordered the buffalo burger. It arrived with mayo which I scraped off, a reminder to be very specific when ordering anything. Other than that, I loved it. At eight ounces it was two ounces over my daily six-ounce red meat limit but I didn’t care in this case, it was too good of a surprise to pass up.

I did pass on the beer, but had what’s become for me a rare diet soda, so I was just as happy with that.

And the biggest news of the night was how much easier bowling seemed physically than the last time I did it several months prior, before my surgery. The blocked artery I had must have been taking its toll on me for longer than I imagined.
John