Healthy-ish Travels in Portland, Oregon

On Monday, I visited Portland, Oregon for a business meeting that I will share shortly will you guys! I landed around 12:30 and quickly made my way in about 20 minutes to my hotel, The Heathman which was made infamous by 50 Shades of Grey. 

After a layover in Chicago and total of 8 hours of travel I needed to move my legs. Sadly, it was raining and I did not pack my rainy workout gear to run outside. I used the small hotel gym and did my own Barry’s Bootcamp Arms & Abs workout and felt satisfied. I must say, the equipment at Barry’s has made me a treadmill snob. I can’t stand anything but a Woodway anymore. 

With 4 hours until dinner, I decided to explore the Pearl District for a quick bite to eat. I made my way to Prasad after finding good reviews on Yelp. It sounded like they had a similar menu to Life Alive and I was right. I ordered a local kombucha and bowl that came with black beans, quinoa, kale, sea vegetables, avocado and a tahini sauce. It was very good, but no match for Life Alive or Cafe Gratitude. 

After my afternoon Dragon bowl snack seen below in the top left corner, I walked around the Pearl District shopping and browsing. I stopped to peak inside the largest independent bookstore in America, Powell’s Books. It was overwhelming and I spent the majority of my time inside looking at the many travel books. Sadly, Get Skinny Again was not in stock… 

There were plenty of other healthy options on the menu that I wanted to try including fresh juices and raw desserts. It all looked so good and was located in a yoga studio but with plenty of seating. 

For Dinner, our group had reservations at Irving Street Kitchen which had a Southern meets North West type menu, not the best for vegetarians. I ordered the Herb Stuffed Trout entree that came with grilled asparagus and toasted faro. It was served with it’s head for presentation but deboned, thank god. Once I removed the head and the skin, the dish was tasty, flavorful and felt light.

We indulged with a little butterscotch pudding for dessert which was amazing. 

Portland is a foodie town and most restaurants use locally sourced ingredients or sustainable seafood, but many of the items are bacon or carb heavy. At least when you indulge, you can feel confident that preservatives and crap ingredients were not used. We ordered a few slices of cornbread for the table and this might have been the best bite of the night (coming from someone who doesn’t like corn bread). 

The next morning, I woke up at 6 am for a jog around the city. I found a nice 3.5 mile look between the Steel Bridge and Hawthorne Bridge during my last visit and decided to follow it again. I highly recommend this run as it is pretty scenic. There is some grass to run on as well if you like to give your shins a break like me. I had a Suja Green Juice that I picked up at Whole Food downtown and packet of Oatmeal, I brought from home. 

I had a busy day at this athletic company’s headquarters…

More on that later… but afterwards, we went back to my favorite Portland restaurant Andina for our final dinner which has a pretty large menu with vegetarian and gluten free options. I decided to go crazy with the fish, again ordering the octopus, ceviche, oysters and scallops. One of my favorite dishes was the beet tartare. 

The picked veggies on the bottom row of the photo were so flavorful and slightly sweet, I could have eaten a bowl full of them. Before I left, I also tried the infamous vegan donuts from VooDoo donuts getting the maple glazed with bavarian cream inside. It tasted pretty close to a Boston Cream Donut from Dunkin’ with maple frosting to be honest which I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing. It didn’t taste vegan, and was certainly good but will I get another one when I return? Probably not… 

Before my early flight on Wednesday morning, I used an elliptical in the hotel gym for the first time in maybe 2 years for 30 minutes. At the Portland airport, I discovered the best cafe before security with a variety of healthy sandwich and salad options to bring through to your flight. I picked up this delicious salad.

I saw other products by the same company past security but never with the variety that I found outside. I’m happy to be in Boston for almost 7 days straight. Yippee! I head to Chicago next Thursday so it’s quite the busy season for me I guess. Do you love to travel like me? I don’t mind it and am slowly getting used to not getting used to time zones anywhere.