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.