Repost: Gluten-free Dining with Children

Somehow, this was posted yesterday, March 10th, to another of my blogs, Know Your Food Boston, which must have been confusing for followers of that blog. I'm reposting it here so that today's earlier post actually makes sense.
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Wow. It's been over a year since I last posted. How time flies! And how things change.

About three months ago, my younger daughter Eleanor began complaining that her tummy hurt. She's just finished a regimen of antibiotics for conjunctivitis, so her doctor and I concluded that she needed probiotics. I pumped her full of yogurt and added Culturelle supplements to her diet. But the tummy issues didn't go away. I recalled that her sister had briefly become lactose intolerant at about the same age, so we tried a lactose-free diet for a couple of weeks. No improvement. Back to the doctor, who diagnosed constipation, a problem she's never really had before. But after the extra fiber got her moving again, we still had tummy troubles. Reluctantly, I decided to try gluten-free, and her troubles have now all but vanished.

We've run into plenty of bumps in the road. For example, lots of granola bars turn out to be sweetened with barley malt, as are (bizarrely) wheat-free Fig Newmans. You'd think they'd find a different sweetener and go fully gluten-free, but no. Gradually, though, we've found substitutes for her favorite foods at home.

Eating out is a whole different ball game.

Most major restaurant chains now offer gluten-free menus, which generally consist of regular items with the glutinous removed. Lots and lots of salads. But I have yet to find a restaurant with a gluten-free kids' menu. This is becoming increasingly frustrating to Eleanor, who would really like to be eating pizza and pasta and all the foods she used to love. And really, there's only so much sushi she can take.

Here's a brief roundup of the restaurants we've tried thus far:

Kame Japanese Restaurant in Downtown Beverly

Japanese is generally a good bet. Miso soup and sushi are pretty safe. Unfortunately, their tempura batter uses wheat flour, so that old favorite is right out, along with shumai and udon noodles. Watch out for tempura-battered shrimp and sweet potato in sushi, too. Even their buckwheat soba noodles turned out to contain a little wheat flour. Even so, with miso soup, inari, and cucumber sushi with red bean ice cream to finish, Eleanor is pretty happy.

Bertucci's in North Beverly

I had read somewhere that Bertucci's offers gluten-free pizza. Not this one, apparently. They were happy to provide me with a gluten-free menu, but the only thing on it that was remotely interesting to Eleanor was the shrimp with polenta appetizer. While she did like the grilled shrimp quite a bit, the polenta was so heavily spiced with basil that she couldn't eat it. Also, setting down a basket full of delicious smelling rolls in front of a gluten-challenged child is like putting an open beer in front of an alcoholic. Bad, bad plan.

Not Your Average Joe's in North Beverly

Not Your Average Joe's has the solution to the bread-on-the-table problem. They very kindly provided Eleanor with her own gluten-free bread and a separate dipping plate of oil to nibble while we waited for our orders. They also provided us with a gluten-free menu, which actually had a kid's menu, none of which Eleanor wanted. The items were grilled chicken, hamburger, or turkey BLT. Eleanor's really not a sandwich person. She wanted pizza, but they didn't have gluten-free pizza. So instead she ordered a quesadilla appetizer with a side of fruit. I specified that the quesadilla have nothing in it but cheese, and it came back as requested - stuffed with pepper jack, which Eleanor hated. Argh. I should have paid better attention to the menu. Eleanor agreed to try the grilled chicken next time.

Organic Garden Cafe in Downtown Beverly

Locally known as Rawbert's, this restaurant specializes in organic, vegan, mostly local, mostly raw food that is also mostly gluten-free. In fact, the default on the menu is that an item is gluten-free unless it specifies otherwise. Note: this is NOT a place to go if you have nut allergies. While they say they do their best to observe allergy requirements, their best is actually not so good, as I'll soon explain.

Eleanor was really excited to go here because they offer gluten-free pizza, and she ordered half a "cheese" pizza (the cheese was actually a cashew paste). The menu and the waitress both warned that it would take 20 minutes to make the pizza. Actual time: 40 minutes. To be fair, they were completely swamped, but still. So we ordered miso soup as an appetizer for her to eat while waiting. It arrived with delicious shiitake mushrooms in it, so of course she utterly refused to eat it. Meanwhile, her sister hated the entire menu so much that the only thing she'd order was brown rice with soy sauce. My husband ordered, somewhat dubiously, the raw falafel wrap. I ordered the Thai Bowl, in part because I love Thai food and in part because it was the only rice bowl that did not include quinoa. Just to be sure, I told the waitress I was allergic to quinoa (this almost never comes up at a restaurant) and confirmed that my selection was quinoa-free.

Guess what. When my bowl arrived, it was a bowl full of quinoa. My husband actually rather liked his raw falafel but said he would have liked it better cooked. By now, Eleanor, who's not quite six, is screaming that she's starving. She wouldn't touch the quinoa, but she did eat some of her sister's rice. Finally, the quinoa was taken away, the pizza arrived - and aside from the crust, it was a raw pizza. Tomato sauce topped with cashew paste topped with tomato slices. Predictably, Eleanor hated  it. Oh, and they never brought her the lemonade she ordered (but didn't charge us for it or the replacement thai bowl I eventually got, well after the pizza). Never, ever going there again.

City Side Diner in Downtown Beverly

It turns out that breakfast is the easiest meal to eat out with a gluten-free kid. Pancakes and waffles aside, Eleanor will very happily eat scrambled eggs and ham, sausage, or bacon with home fries. I brought along some Udi's gluten-free bread, which they were happy to toast and serve with Eleanor's meal. Happiness all around.

So providing gluten-free restaurant food to kids turns out to be even trickier than I'd imagined. I so wish that we had a Flatbread's up on the North Shore. The one in Somerville quite happily makes delicious gluten-free pizzas. In fact, I think most indie pizza joints in Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington offer gluten-free crust. The only option for gluten-free pizza I've found so far on the North Shore is Flying Saucer Pizza in Salem. They're delicious, but sadly, they don't deliver to Beverly. I suspect we'll have better luck with steakhouses, where she can get grilled shrimp and mashed potatoes, but that means dining out with her will be a lot more expensive in the future. Mexican might also be a good option: corn tortillas, beans and rice. Except that, as a native New Mexican, I'm something of a chile snob and think most local Mexican restaurants are basically overpriced Taco Bells.

Meanwhile, I'll keep on searching for the holy grail: a restaurant that serves gluten-free mac'n'cheese.

Burtons Grill for the Win!

After yesterday's rotten gluten-free experience, I hit the Web looking for gluten-free-friendly restaurant chains, figuring this would be much easier than identifying lots of local restaurants. I found the Gluten Free Travel restaurant guide, which mentioned Burtons Grill as being particularly friendly to gluten-sensitive patrons. So I checked out their kids' menu, and I was stunned. They have the best kids' menu, gluten free or not, that I've ever seen in a major chain.

It's called {B} Choosy, and it allows kids to choose exactly what they want from five different food groups: protein, vegetable, fruit, grain, and dairy. Finally! A restaurant that goes out of their way to include vegetables in kids' meals. Not only that, they offer them in the portion sizes recommended by the USDA. So rather than an absurd heap of french fries and two measly 1/8-inch slices of apple (what kids' meals offer at Border Cafe), you get a small portion of fries and a nearly equal portion of both fruit and veg. One of the dairy selections is frozen yogurt, so that means dessert is included. All for $6.

Best of all, everything - and I do mean everything - on the kids' menu is either gluten free or has a gluten free version. Yes, that includes the pasta! So your gluten-challenged child can get exactly the same thing her non-challenged sister is getting.

We tried out Burtons Grill at the Northshore Mall in Peabody this evening, and it more than lived up to our expectations. As at Not Your Average Joe's, they served Eleanor her own gluten-free roll with butter and gave Annie and I their standard fresh bread with a lovely pesto dipping oil (Annie opted for some of Eleanor's butter). Eleanor delightedly ordered chicken fingers, french fries, mixed fruit, tomatoes, and frozen yogurt. Annie ordered a hamburger with cheddar cheese, carrot sticks, apple slices, and potato chips. The girls happily shared chips and fries between them, and Eleanor polished off Annie's apples. The only thing on Annie's plate she wouldn't have been able to eat was the hamburger bun. I tried a bite of chicken finger; it was tender and delicious. I would never have guessed that the batter was gluten free. Similarly, Annie's burger was moist, cooked to medium as requested, and quite tasty. The chips were amazing, cut lengthwise and enormous, clearly made in house.

I was quite pleased with the adult menu. It ranged in price from $12 burgers and flatbread pizzas (also all available in gluten-free crusts) to high end dishes such as $22 crab cakes and $30 surf and turf. I opted for the $18 chicken and wild mushroom ravioli, which was delightful. The chicken was grilled but not dry, tender and delicious. The mushroom cream sauce was nicely accented by cubes of cooked butternut squash. And the raviolis themselves, while not so wild (pretty sure they were stuffed with a combination of portobellos and shiitakes) were nonetheless very tasty, with the mushrooms fully cooked and lacking the grainy texture I often encounter in mushroom raviolis.

So this is a place you can bring the kids for an inexpensive, casual dinner or a more upscale, indulgent meal. The waitstaff was excellent, highly attentive, and very accomodating of Eleanor's needs. I also liked the atmosphere, which was cozy with background music that both the girls and I enjoyed. My one gripe is that none of the food was local or organic, which I try to support whenever possible. Overall, though, I'm delighted. I think this is our new go-to restaurant.

Restaurant Ratings:

3 smileys for attentive, friendly service


3 carrots for well-balanced, healthy food

 

3 moos for a good range in prices

Best Kids' Menu Ever - Bluefin Restaurant in Middleton

Back when we lived in Cambridge's Porter Square, we frequently ate at Bluefin Restaurant in the Porter Exchange, which also houses part of Lesley University. Bluefin offers delicious traditional Japanese cuisine at reasonable prices. Our kids love the sushi, especially the tofu-wrapped inari, and my younger daughter particularly enjoys their miso soup. I love their bento boxes and their udon noodle soup.

When we moved out to the North Shore, we decided to try their restaurant in Middleton. To our surprise, the menu was subtly different. While all of our old favorites were present, they also offered what has got to be the best kids' menu I have ever seen. For $7.50 (admittedly pricey), your child gets to choose four of the following offerings:

• Crispy Fried Chicken
• Shumai Dumplings
• French Fries
• Deep Fried Shrimps
• Sweet Potato Tempura
• Sweet Corn
• Rice
• Fresh Fruit
• Chicken Tempura
• Chicken Cutlet
• Sausage

Why on earth hasn't anyone thought of this before? This is picky eater heaven. The child has total control over their dish. My picky elder daughter ordered shumai, sweet potato tempura, chicken tempura, and rice. My younger daughter ordered deep fried shrimps, sweet corn, fresh fruit, and sausage. And blissfully, everyone was happy.

I'd love to see them add miso soup, some sushi - say three or four pieces of cucumber maki, or one inari - and generally some green vegetables. I'd love it even more if they had a less expensive option to choose only three items for younger children who eat less.

More generally, I'd be delighted if this became a meme copied by other restaurants in the area. What if a seafood restaurant offered kids the choice of fish, shrimp, hot dog, corn on the cob, deep fried zucchini, french fries, rice pilaf, and apple slices? What a great, well balanced meal your child could put together for herself.

Stone Hearth Pizza, Belmont, MA

It's not often that I get the opportunity to write one post for two blogs, but Stone Hearth Pizza in Belmont, MA fits the bill. We've dined at the Stone Hearth Pizza in Cambridge near Porter Sq., but the restaurant there is small, cramped, and suffers from slow service. We'd heard that the Belmont restaurant was larger and had better kid amenities, so we decided to check it out.

The Belmont restaurant is indeed about three times the size of the Cambridge location and rather more plush, but it had no kid amenities at all. And where the Cambridge location has one wall covered with placemats colored in by their underage patrons, the Belmont location has no such kid-friendly atmosphere.

The food, as always, is quite good. Stone Hearth Pizza uses local, mostly organic ingredients. Their menu and their pizza boxes feature a map of New England showing exactly where their ingredients come from (see a complete list here). Their pizzas are inventive and tasty. Our favorites are the Sausage and Carmelized Onion pizza and Bacon and Blue pizza.

This time out, we tried the Farm Fresh pizza, which sounded great on paper: "Garlic oil, cherry tomatoes, charred red/yellow peppers, Yukon gold potatoes, artichoke hearts, green/black olives, fresh mozzarella, topped with salad of arugula/red onion/prosciutto." Unfortunately, the olives completely overwhelmed the flavors of the other vegetables. When we picked the olives off (to our omnivorous two-year-old's delight), we discovered that the pizza without them had hardly any flavor at all.

The girls had better luck with their pizzas. Our five-year-old practically inhaled her cheese pizza, and our two-year-old had to compete with her daddy to finish her cheeseburger pizza. We knew from past experience to stay away from the mac 'n' cheese, which was oddly too spicy for the kids to eat. I like it that way, but the kids won't touch it.

The kid's meals included drinks (lemonade and chocolate milk, respectively) and desserts, a choice of cookies or gelato. Both girls chose the gelato, vanilla and chocolate respectively, and my husband also ordered the hazelnut. The vanilla gelato's vanilla flavor was overpowering, and my five-year-old gratefully traded her sister for the chocolate when she was done with it. My husband's hazelnut gelato was chunky with bits of hazelnut but also somehow over-flavored. The chocolate, however, was quite good.

Regardless of how good the meals were and the quality of the ingredients, we got some mild sticker shock from the price: $8.50 for a kid's meal is a bit much, especially when we paid only $12.50 for our own pizza. Then again, when you do the math, an 8" cheese pizza is $5.60, a drink is $2, and gelato is $4 (two cookies are $1), for a total of $11.60, which means the kid's meal is actually a bargain. I do wish, however, that just one of the kid's meals had included vegetables.

Overall, while I applaud Stone Hearth Pizza's commitment to local, organic foods, I'm not all that impressed by either their pizzas or their prices. Zing! Pizza in Porter Sq. also uses local, organic ingredients, has more interesting and inventive pizzas, is less expensive, and they deliver. Their restaurant is seriously tiny, though, so if you want to eat out, Stone Hearth pizza is a better bet. If you're eating in Cambridge, I recommend that you call ahead and order in advance to compensate for the slow wait staff. For the record, the service at the Belmont location was fine.

Restaurant ratings:

2 smileys for good, friendly service


4 carrots for exceedingly healthy food

 

2 moos for slightly pricey food, particularly the kid's meals

Not So Friendly's

Disclaimer: I don't like "family dining" restaurant chains. In my experience, they're family-friendly only in that they're cheap, and that means poor quality and virtually no fresh vegetables. So I was already skeptical when some friends told us that Friendly's had changed its menu and was now actually a pretty decent place to eat. In particular, they said, their new grilled chicken pesto sandwich was quite good. Last night, we gave in and agreed to give Friendly's another try.

Once again, I was reminded of why I hate restaurants like this. Just because you have gaudily painted walls, ample high chairs, and ice cream sundaes, that doesn't make you a kid-friendly restaurant. We went to the Friendly's in Bedford, which was cramped and nearly windowless with no play space for the kids. And the service, while indeed friendly, was glacially slow.

Dining with children is a race: will the food arrive before the kids completely melt down in their seats? Any restaurant that caters to families with small children ought to understand this. In this respect, Friendly's failed miserably. We ordered our food, and five precious minutes later, the waitress came back and informed us that they were out of pesto, which meant that three of the adults had to reorder. Had the waitress been clever, she would have put in the kid's orders in advance. Instead, our meal was delayed by ten minutes.

By the time the Fribble milkshakes arrived, the kids were already thoroughly bored of their crayons and activity placemats. The Fribbles and serial trips to the potty kept them occupied for about half of the remaining time-to-food. Fortunately, we had gone to Arlington Town Day in the morning, and I had various toys the kids had won at carnival games: yo-yo, articulated snake, bracelets and magnifying glasses. This bought another five minutes or so. I began converting placemats into paper airplanes. We played musical chairs. We had just started a game of 20 questions when the food arrived.

The adult food arrived first, and they had gotten my order wrong (honey barbeque chicken sandwich instead of honey mustard chicken sandwich, and no side salad). We bought off the kids with french fries until their Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese finally arrived, and then it was too hot to eat. Quick! Remind them of the Fribbles. Finally, the pasta cooled, my food arrived, and we could all eat.

To be fair, my chicken sandwich was pretty good, if rather messy (dripping honey mustard sauce everywhere), and the kids' meals do now offer vegetable sides (our two-year-old omnivore got broccoli and then stole her sister's franks). The salad, on the other hand, was pathetic: iceberg lettuce topped with red onion rings, shredded cheese, croutons, and exactly two cherry tomatoes. And my fries were, well, limp.

Then came time to order ice cream, which we felt honor-bound to stay and eat because it came free with our food. This entailed another round of kid entertainment, consisting mostly of the potty-trained going to the bathroom again and my rather tired two-year-old curling up in my lap. We arrived at Friendly's around 5:30. We left at 7:45, full but exhausted.

The one good thing about this experience was that it was vastly cheap, coming to less than $40 for a family of four. But I would gladly have paid more for swift, competent service and happier children.

Restaurant Ratings:

1 smiley for lousy amenities and service.


1 carrot for generally unhealthy food.


1 moo for dirt cheap prices.

Not Your Average Joe's - Arlington, MA

It's been a few years since we dared try Not Your Average Joe's restaurant in Arlington Center. While I've always liked the fresh, delicious food, and the staff have been indulgent of child diners, my elder daughter found the room far too enticing and would keep wiggling out of her seat and running delightedly around the restaurant. Chasing her became too much of a chore, especially when I was vastly pregnant, so we stopped going.

Today, with our elder daughter, now five years old, and her much calmer two-year-old sibling, we tried Not Your Average Joe's again for lunch, and we were pleased with the results.

NYAJ's decor is fun and interesting. While the carpet and seating are in soft, muted colors, the top 18 inches or so of every wall is painted with colored squares and dots. Rod iron sculptures are scattered throughout the room: people on swings, a human pyramid, hands on the walls on which to hang coats, hangers over the brick oven for the pizza servers, etc. The yellow, orange, and blue lamps over the booths and bar area give the room a warm glow. We were easily able to distract our energetic five-year-old with these fun features: how many yellow lamps do you see? How many sculptures of people on swings? How many dots painted on the wall have two colors? Our two-year-old happily drew with crayons and munched on the delicious bread.

The kids' menu is quite good, offering cheese pizza, mac and cheese, hand-breaded chicken fingers, grilled cheese, and pasta with butter or tomato sauce for young kids. For older kids, they have balsamic glazed salmon, sirloin tips, angus sirloin burger, and grilled chicken. About half of these dishes come with a choice of side: french fries, vegetables, or fresh fruit. For our kids, we ordered the mac and cheese and the angus burger with green beans. We also ordered a side of cooked carrots. When I mentioned that we were going to be splitting the food between the girls, the waitress offered to have that done for us in the kitchen.

And they did. Each girl got a bowl with half a kid's portion of mac and cheese and a plate with half the angus burger, green beans, and carrots. Now, here's the best part: the girls were so happy with the mac and cheese and the vegetables, they didn't even touch the burgers (well, our elder daughter took one nibble).

As for the adults, I had the spinach and pear salad, which was awesome, exactly what I'd been wanting, and my husband had the chicken piccata, one of his favorites, which also came with green beans. The beans were cooked perfectly - just slightly crunchy. The carrots were also sweet and delicious but not mushy. The mac and cheese was lovely, neither overly bland nor overly rich. Honestly, the least tasty thing we got was, in fact, the burger. Which is not to say that it was bad; it was just... a burger.

We didn't stay for the kids' free ice cream dessert - our two-year-old was curled up on the booth seat trying to nap by the end of the meal - but we did leave satisfied and happy. For such a reasonable price, the food quality was excellent, and so was the service. The one thing that would make this restaurant perfect would be a kids' corner, where quick or picky eaters can go to hang out, letting their slower-eating parents enjoy their meal. By the end of the meal, our five-year-old was scaling the back of the booth and escaping once again, but now she's old enough that she was merely asserting her independence and desire for more personal space by annexing the booth behind us. Fortunately, Sunday lunches appear to be pretty slow there, and the booth - along with 3/4 of the restaurant - was unoccupied.

- 3 smileys for good service and fun atmosphere
- 3 carrots for healthy food
- 1 moo for reasonable price

Added Ratings

When I posted my first two restaurant reviews, I failed to use my smiley/carrot/moo rating system. I've now updated both posts with ratings, listed at the end of each post.