Get A Cardio High And Then Chow Down At Cook Restaurant In Boston

Fitness and food always go hand in hand. A healthy lifestyle includes an active fitness regime and conscious food choices. On the fun side of things, a great workout followed by a great meal makes for an enjoyable one-two punch. We've done this with classes at Equinox and the nearby SIP Wine Bar and Kitchen, and just recently, we tried it at Cardio High and Cook restaurant in Newton.

Cardio High is a low-impact workout designed to get the heart racing while targeting all the main muscle groups. Using impact-free treadmills and spinning bikes, the instructor rushes you through short-spurt intervals to get your heart to amp up and recover throughout the 60-minute workout. The soft-impact style takes pressure off bones and joints, making this a perfect workout if pounding out miles on concrete isn't your thing. You also have the option of hooking yourself up to a heart monitor, which will show you your class trajectory and progress if you are a returning customer.

Cardio High is singular in that there is one location, in Newton, and one location only. This is where the idea of a day trip/duo of activities really starts to look attractive. Enter Cook restaurant — also in Newton and conveniently located a brief, cool-down-length walk around the corner and down the street.

Executive chef and owner Paul Turano brings his concept of an approachable but quality-driven neighborhood joint to the table. Wood-fired flatbreads, sandwiches and seasonal salads make up most of the menu during the day for lunch, and a few more entrees are added to the roster for dinner.

As you will be coming from a Cardio High workout, you may go into your meal with a health-conscious perspective. The kale salad is a perfect option, as is the vegan Waldorf salad with curried cashews, grapes, apples, celery and almond milk-avocado dressing. On the other hand, you may feel like you deserve a treat for having pushed yourself so hard just moments earlier. Something more robust like their classic burger or tagliatelle with meatballs might be more up your alley. Whether you are going healthy or not, the bacon-caramel popcorn is an absolute must, and of the flatbreads, the bacon and corn is a recurring favorite.

Cardio High and Cook are a perfect match for this particular semi-suburb of Boston. Here's to hoping we can get higher on cardio here in the city soon – until then, looks like that food reward will really be pulling its weight.