How to Actually Eat Gluten Free at a Restaurant: Part 1

Do your research. If you and your friends/family/coworkers are planning to go out for a meal, and someone makes a suggestion, hop online and find the restaurant's website. If it's a regional or national chain, they likely have a nutrition facts section where the allergens in their menu items are shown. If the place is just local, you can use websites like UrbanSpoon (use the gluten free 'tag' for your city) to find out if anyone has eaten gluten free there before, and how successful they were. A few other sources for this are: Gluten Free World Map (put together by the Celiac Chicks), and you will also find restaurant reviews on blogs (hmmm, like mine - a list of restaurants in the greater Salt Lake metro area). So that's it, right? That's all you need to eat gluten free successfully in a restaurant? Well, not so fast.

Here are a few of our tips that can take you beyond the allergen menu and hopefully give you more successful dining experiences.

Focus on restaurants that have a limited menu. So, what do I mean by a limited menu? Well, if you live in the west, think of the Inn 'n' Out concept. What do they sell there? Hamburgers (with veggies), fries, fountain drinks, and milkshakes. That's it. Yes, there are buns with the hamburgers. But the fact that their menu is not 18 pages long (think The Cheesecake Factory menu...that thing could provide enough reading for a bus ride around the world!) Because there are so few ingredients in their kitchen, they can safely say that the only foods in their kitchen with gluten are the hamburger buns. Thus, less chances for cross contamination! Yay! Our favorite local restaurant with a limited menu is Five Guys Burgers and Fries, with several locations across the Salt Lake Valley.

A restaurant with amazing risotto in Milan, Italy.

Know how to explain yourself. If you have work situations when you must eat out, the great part is that many caterers and conventions are able to accommodate your requests. I don't mean those convention center snack bars at the back of the exhibit hall (don't eat there!), I mean if there is a catered lunch or dinner for a banquet, a company holiday party, or a special event. If you work for a smaller company who is catering a holiday party, get the name of the caterer from the person who organized the event at your office and call the caterer more than 24 hours in advance. One year I waited until a few hours before the event to call and ask if the food that night could accommodate me. They made a few things just for me, but explained that if I had called a few days before, the chef would have loved to prepare something just for me.

In a more general restaurant setting, explain to the chef or the manager that you have a serious food allergy (which is somewhat inaccurate, but gets their attention) and proceed to explain how you want your food prepared. Don't forget to ask questions. In the hamburger joint, do they toast their buns on the same grill with the hamburgers? Is their salad pre-mixed (with croutons)? Does that gluten free pasta get cooked in clean pasta water? Are they using a separate wok for your gluten free stir fry? Is all of their chicken coated in a special spice mix? Usually, the waitstaff is glad to ask the kitchen, and the chef is glad to give the answers. Unless of course you are at a restaurant like Applebee's, where the manager explained that they are unsure what ingredients are in their food because it all comes pre-frozen and isn't labeled in detail (yikes!)

Be aware of cross-contamination issues. My favorite examples of this is french fries. They're just potatoes, right? Well, if they're cooked in the same fryer as onion rings or chicken fingers, the fry oil absorbs the gluten proteins and adds them conveniently into your fries. Only certain restaurants have separate fryers for their French fries, and either don't serve any other fried items, or fry them in a separate fryer (think onion rings, chicken fingers, and who-knows-what-else...). Focus on Five Guys Burgers and Fries, Inn 'n' Out, Mazza Middle-Eastern, and Chick-fil-a.

This also applies to sandwich places. It may be that Subway can make you a salad bowl with their sandwich fixin's, but if they came right of "the line" (where the regular sandwiches are made), you are likely to end up with some gluten in your food. This applies to delis, sandwich shops, and even those "fresh Mex" places that build you a burrito to your specifications. I haven't had many good experiences with Chipotle or Barbacoa because of that same principle.

In a casual dining place, politely ask if the cooks will change their gloves before preparing your meal. This helps!

Part 2 comes next week!