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Eating Out

Want Fries With That? Gym Food Grows Up

Lori Eanes

    Among the fitness crowd, there may be no more compelling study in Charles Darwin’s bicentennial year than the evolution of gym food.
    Back in the 1970s, refueling after a Nautilus machine circuit meant gorp, a glass of raw eggs and something—anything—topped off with a few spoonfuls of wheat germ. In the ’80s, recovery from aerobics class had gym-goers bellying up to the bar as staffers poured pints of gloopy, brown protein shakes. And in the ’90s, the cool-down after hula hoop class entailed a visit to the club’s blender-tender, who’d pluck wheat grass from tiny planters, add a boost of heaven knows what, and then whip it all into a frothy, green smoothie.
    Fast-forward to today, and gym food looks nothing like its ancestors. Depending on the health club—and there are three standouts in Alameda at Mariner Square Athletic Club, Bladium Sports & Fitness Club and the Harbor Bay Club—survival of the fittest now means capping off a stint on the elliptical machine with dining options that range from local, organic and sustainable to potentially artery clogging, sometimes all on the same menu.
    “It’s an interesting challenge,” says Camille Lingley, the bar manager at Harbor Bay’s Clubhouse Bar & Grill. “I mean, it’s a health club. So people work out, but food may not be on their mind. Having a cocktail may not be on their mind. A lot of people have worked out here for years and don’t even know we’re up here.”
    But as is the case at Mariner Square Athletic Club and Bladium, the fact that the Harbor Bay Club’s eatery is surrounded by people trying to work off the very calories they’re serving up seems to matter little. On an otherwise humdrum Tuesday evening recently, the Bar & Grill was jumping, with a foursome at a table wolfing down burgers and BLTs, while a regular named Ernesto sidled up to the brass-railed bar and had a beer slid to him as if he were Norm from Cheers. If there weren’t a phalanx of occupied treadmills plainly visible just a few hundred feet away, filled with joggers trotting endlessly to nowhere, one would never have guessed this bar and grill was actually part of a health club.
    “It’s sort of a dichotomy,” allows Lingley. Just as each gym has its own personality, so do their eateries. Mariner Square Athletic Club, a gym with all the standard features, recently replaced its Feel Good Cafe with the Bay Side Grille, operated by Joe and Ray Nickaloff—brothers who have experience operating a handful of local Lyons restaurants, which they revamped and renamed as Capitola Grilles last year. Despite the extra “e,” creature comforts at this newest grill aren’t many, and a worn brown rug, spartan tables that overlook a former racquetball court and a tiki-style bar leftover from Feel Good remain the highlights. Although the restaurant hadn’t opened in time for review, Bay Side promises to pick up where Feel Good left off, namely by having a prodigious breakfast menu featuring omelets and skillets, and a lunch and dinner menu with cooked-to-order Angus beef burgers and specialty panini, along with sandwiches such as a torta cubana with which the Nickaloffs had success at Capitola. And for former Feel Good patrons who loved the guilty pleasure of those classic fries served in an oversized, white cafe-au-lait cup, never fear. The Nickaloffs say they are installing not one, but two, new friers in the kitchen, and yes, fries are assuredly on the menu.
    “I know, fried foods aren’t health foods,” says Joe Nickaloff. “But I’ll be honest. I’ve served healthy food, and people don’t eat it. Low fat is low taste. But one thing to remember is that we use all trans-fat-free oils in our friers. So yes, people will still be able to order fries at Bay Side Grille.”
    Funny thing, those fries. While cups of them used to line up on the tiki bar at Mariner Square like Irish Coffees at San Francisco’s Buena Vista Cafe, and the appetite for them will likely not abate in the future, nary a single bit of golden-fried loveliness can be found less than two miles away at Bladium’s sports bar, Hangar 40.
    That’s because the first thing head chef Rudy Duran did when he took over the operation three years ago was rip out Hangar 40’s deep frier and throw it in the dumpster. His reasoning? Bladium is a sports complex.
    “People hate me for that,” acknowledges Duran, who is also head chef and co-owner of Alameda’s 75-seat Italian restaurant, C’era Una Volta. “But come on. Pizzas, pastas, chicken are all so much healthier.”
    Indeed, of all the gyms, Duran’s food seems out of place at Bladium if only because the quality clashes with the chaos. Walk into the former airplane hangar on any given evening and inside the cavernous space are games of soccer, volleyball, inline hockey, basketball and lacrosse. Lycra-clad fitness buffs are rock climbing, and wiry, muscle-bound men are boxing. Moms are spinning and dads are Stairmastering. There’s sweat going on, in a thousand different ways. It’s a wonder, then, that food isn’t an afterthought.
    It isn’t, though, with Duran at the helm and sous chef Rebecca Hoffman handling daily duties. Ingredients are local, and if possible, bought from Italian-American vendors. And while Duran can certainly break down what everyone in the gym orders—soccer players like the hamburgers ($6), volleyball players like the smoothies ($3.50), hockey players prefer the pastas ($8), boxers go for rice and salad ($8)—it might be the pizza that has “signature dish” written all over it. The 10-inch mushroom pizza ($12), with tasty chunks of local farm-raised shiitake, fresh mozzarella and a tomato sauce that’s impossibly tomatoey, comes to the table on a ridged pizza stone fresh from the oven. It’s the best pizza in Alameda that you’ve never eaten.
    “But no fries,” says Duran, a flinty glint in his eye. “It’s a healthy place.”
    At Harbor Bay’s Bar & Grill, in contrast, the fry controversy has never crinkled a brow, unless it meant deciding between serving crinkled or regular. Fries come several ways at this in-house operation—regular, curly, criss-cross and sweet potato—and are the side for most dishes. The deep frier also gets a workout with onion rings (another side), chicken strips and chips ($9.25), fish and chips ($9.25), the crispy chicken salad ($8.25) and most appetizers.
    The family-friendly menu has its bright spots. The ½-pound Angus beef hamburger ($7.25), served on a ciabatta roll and cooked to order, is a good, old-fashioned burger. And those fish and chips are excellent, with a crackling coat that gives way to tender, moist cod. Cranberry slaw, another side that can substitute for the fries or onion rings, is creamy with a tangy crunch.
    What’s best, though, is that there is no wheat germ, no wheatgrass and absolutely no protein shakes—at any of these gyms. Instead, there’s beer. On tap. At all of them. And in some instances, like at Harbor Bay, there’s a full bar.
    Evolution?
    Or intelligent design?

Bay Side Grille at Mariner Square Athletic Club, American, 2227 Mariner Square Loop, (510) 523-7797, www.marinersq.com, 8 a.m.–8 p.m. Mon.–Thu., 8 a.m.–6:30 p.m. Sat., 8 a.m.–2 p.m. Sun. Open to the public.

Hangar 40 at Bladium Sports & Fitness Club, American and Italian, 800 W. Tower Ave., Building 40, (510) 522-2809, www.bladium.com, 5 p.m.–11:30 p.m. Mon.–Fri., 9:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m. Sat., noon–6 p.m. Sun. Open to members.

Clubhouse Bar & Grill at the Harbor Bay Club, American, 200 Packet Landing Road, (510) 521-5414, www.harborbayclub.com, bar hours 5 p.m.–11 p.m. Mon.–Thu., 5 p.m.–11 p.m. Fri.; grill hours 5 p.m.–10 p.m. Mon.–Fri., family dining 5 p.m.–10 p.m. Mon.–Thu. Open to public; alcohol available only to members and guests of members.