Want to hear a funny story? I don’t know why I ask, when we all know I’m going to tell you anyway.

Here’s the setup: since I am no longer blogging much about food, I am not in the habit of taking pictures of my meals before I dig in. Here’s the punchline: while we were in New York, Joel took more pictures of food than I did.

It’s not so much funny, haha, as it is funny weird.

ANYway, I figured I’d blog about my favorite restaurants we went to, even though I don’t have pictures of everything and some of my pictures are pretty bad. The food was good – that’s what matters.

Risotteria Melotti

This is a 100% gluten-free Italian restaurant in East Village. The entire menu is risottos (or brown rice pasta) and we ordered what we wanted mixed in. I had the lunch special, which was a half sized salad and risotto, which was still more food than I could eat! I had the pear and avocado salad, then pollo e pepperoni (because it reminded me of a dish I ate in Italy …)

The best part of the meal, in my opinion, was the bread basket.

It’s such a novel thing to me now, to get bread I can eat with my meal! I ate, like, three pieces of bread and one of the seasoned rice cakes (which was a contributing factor in why my lunch portion was more than I could eat.)

Bareburger

We went here with our friends Morgana and Grahme, who recommended it as they’d taken another gluten free person there and had good experiences. We ate at the one in Times Square, but there are several locations around NYC, so I played a little game called “spot the Bareburger” as we wandered around the city. They were everywhere!

I wish I had a picture to show you, but here’s the rundown: I had a chocolate peanut butter milkshake, all four of us split a bucket of sweet potato fries, and then I had a turkey burger in a lettuce wrap. They have gluten free buns available, but at that point, it had been a couple of days since I’d eaten a vegetable, so lettuce sounded good.

Morrell Wine Bar

We picked this spot just outside of Rockefeller Center for lunch before our tour of NBC Studios. It ended up being our most expensive meal in New York! Only because this was one of only a couple times that we ordered an appetizer, drinks, and entrees – we shared warm rosemary olives; I had a glass of wine, Joel had a hard cider; then I had the cobb salad pictured above, and Joel had a piece of cod, which was also gluten-free. It is a rare day that we both order something GF in a restaurant and can share, so I was a happy camper.

Le Pain Quotidien

We ended up eating here twice – I insisted on going back a second time so I could take a photo of the food 🙂 I didn’t realize this place is actually a chain, and there was a location literally next door to our hotel in D.C.

No matter – it was worth eating there twice. I even had the same thing both times: a hard boiled egg with gluten free crackers and a side of ham and cheese. I ended up making open faced sandwiches with the crackers, ham, and cheese.

I found these GF buckwheat crackers which are really similar to what they served at Le Pain at the Metro Market in West Seattle, so I can continue to eat open faced ham and cheese sandwiches now that we’re home.

***This post was originally published in August 2011.***

Those of us from the U.S. get a kick out of mocking our neighbors to the north – we joke that their money isn’t real, about their accents, and how can they take their own law enforcement seriously when they’re called Mounties?!

But I will say in Canada’s defense: they really had their act together when in came to gluten-free eating. The only restaurant that didn’t know how to serve me a GF meal was the one in the hotel we stayed in (and they also didn’t seem to understand wifi, so they’re a little behind the times.)

Victoria, on the southern edge of Vancouver Island, is very much a tourist town, so it’s really in their best interests to be able to accommodate their GF guests.

Here are some of my words of wisdom for any gluten-freebies who travel.

Pack snacks
We took the Victoria Clipper, a passenger ferry that travels daily between Seattle and Victoria, early Friday morning, and I was glad to have the food I’d packed the night before as there was literally nothing on their menu that I could eat. I took beef jerky, some veggies, plenty of chocolate, almond butter squeeze packs, and an apple for Joel.

The fancy, trendy (see: expensive) restaurants are better at gluten-free.
Sad, but true.

On Saturday night, Joel took me to Vista 18, on the 18th floor of the Chateau Hotel in Victoria. We pulled up their menu online before we made our reservations and saw that they had a gluten-free vegetarian lasagna, so I had high hopes that were not disappointed.

I ordered halibut from their “Simplicity” menu, which came with buttered mashed potatoes, vegetables, and a choice of five sauces – I figured there’d be two sauce options that were safe for me, but actually all five were gluten-free. I went with the orange horseradish butter, naturally.

Oh! And before our meal came, they brought me a bread basket with a couple of slices of GF bread from a local bakery, and my own butter so that I wouldn’t have to share.

***

For our final meal before we boarded our ferry back to Seattle on Sunday, we ate at Milestones, which is right on the water and famous as the head chef was on Top Chef Canada. I ordered a gluten-free hamburger, which came with a small salad and my choice of either four cheeses, bacon and cheese, or bacon and guacamole. Bacon and guac, please! It was on the best, fluffiest GF bun I think I’ve ever eaten. This was probably my favorite meal I had over the weekend … and I forgot to take a picture of it.

Smartphones are worth every penny
I was not a believer in iPhones … until I got mine. I love it, and highly recommend a smartphone for looking up nearby gluten-free friendly restaurants or a grocery store. Unfortunately, we discovered as we crossed into Canadian waters that we’d have to keep our phones in airplane mode to avoid an enormous international phone bill. This meant we several times had to buy bottled water at Starbucks to connect to the wifi 🙂

Joel made a snarky comment as we wandered aimlessly around downtown Victoria looking for breakfast on Saturday morning about how hard it must’ve been to travel before smart phones. Then he used a method to find a restaurant that I’d forgotten about – he stopped and asked one of the locals for a recommendation.

Be open minded

That recommendation led us to Floyd’s Diner – I was pretty dubious that a diner would be able to accommodate my dietary needs, especially after reading their allergy warning on the front page of their menu, but they were very knowledgeable. Saturday morning, I had a smoked salmon omelette with goat cheese, and the waitress recommended substituting the toast on the side for breakfast potatoes, which were made in a dedicated fryer with their French fries, and thus safe.

Sunday morning we went back for more, and I ordered the “Listen to me when I’m talking to you, son” which was two eggs, bacon, potatoes and toast, which I subbed for half an avocado.

***

On Friday, when we first disembarked in Victoria, we were hungry, and set off in search of a restaurant when we came upon Bard and Banker’s, a Scottish pub. I was dubious about pub food, too, but when we asked if they were good at gluten-free, they retrieved a GF menu for me and I deemed them safe.

I glanced at the menu and ordered the Cobb salad for the egg, avocado, and bacon, without even noticing that it came with blue cheese (which is questionable, because the mold is sometimes grown on rye bread). They double checked for me, and it was, in fact, safe for me to eat. After two years without moldy cheese, though, I decided I didn’t really care for it and ate around the big chunks.

I skipped the gluten free beer they offered, and drank a hard cider instead.

Lastly, if you’re going to walk 6-ish miles every day of your vacation, stay hydrated. And pack band-aids.

So, let’s say it’s your first time in Africa. You’ve been there for about a week, and while you’re eaten some wonderful food, your only complaint is that it’s just like the food you eat back home. You want a real, traditional African meal. If you’re staying in Cape Town, I hope that, as our did, the hotel’s guest services recommends Gold.

The menu at Gold is predetermined, and 8-10 courses. Though our group was only seven, we had several food restrictions among us. Our waitress asked a few questions of the vegetarian, and when I said “I need to eat gluten free” she just said “okay,” and walked away.

I won’t lie. I kind of freaked out right then. But the next time I saw her, she was bringing our first course of dips and bread, and set a little plate of rice cakes in front of me. I knew I’d be okay.

Our next course was little rolls of roti (that’s a flatbread) with spiced ground ostrich. A few minutes after everyone else had started eating, the waitress returned with a little bowl of ostrich just for me.

It was my first time eating ostrich – it’s a gamey red meat. I’d say it’s somewhere between lamb and elk.

Next, a chicken pot pie. The pie part was a little piece of bread – mine was just chicken with sauce (the sauce was thickened with tapioca. you can see the little tapioca beads in the gravy.) The flavor was kind of like rotisserie chicken.

The last several courses came out all at once – there were several things I couldn’t eat (cous cous, a tabbouleh), but they brought me some spiced basmati rice, and there were still plenty of options to keep me busy. A lentil daal, some patties made from sweet potato, onion and spinach, and this …

is springbok stew. Springboks are a small antelope, the national animal of South Africa (can you imagine — being able to EAT your national animal?!) It was very beefy, and very tender. We saw (and ate) some springbok later on, at Bushman’s Kloof, but here’s a preview of what they look like:

As cute as they are delicious.

But wait – there’s more.

Periodically, while we were eating, a group would come out and perform. They sang, they danced, they played drums. But the best part was when they convinced (well, they kind of forced, but still) Joel to join the dance.

Thanks Geraldine for this photo.

Betcha didn’t know he could dance! Neither did I 😉

Now that I’ve finished recapping our time in Cape Town, South Africa (still to come – Bushman’s Kloof!) here’s the rundown on what I ate.

While South Africa has its own culinary traditions, most of the food we came across was not dissimilar from what we eat back home. Think lots of eggs and bacon, roast chicken, steak, potatoes and rice and salad. It was exceedingly easy to eat gluten-free, and several places even had gluten free breads or desserts.

I didn’t take pictures of everything I ate, but here are the ones I did photograph:

On our second night in town, we were invited out to dinner by some customers of Joel’s work. They took us to a burger restaurant, which we laughed about – of course they take the Americans out for burgers and fries! The restaurant (I don’t remember the name, sorry) had a number of WHEAT-free options, but not GLUTEN-free options. I ended up with a burger minus the bun, and salad on the side. It was yummy, but I kind of had my hopes up for a GF bun.

Remember how I learned at the Slave Lodge that most of the slaves in South Africa were brought in from India? Indian food, curry in particular, remains popular and was very easy to find. This was from a stall at the Market on the Wharf, where we went for lunch one day. I wandered around the market for a while, not seeing anything that I could eat, when I came across a woman with vats of curry and this, butter chicken. That’s saffron rice underneath, and a tomato relish and cilantro on top.

This is lamb dish called denningsvleis from a restaurant called Karibu – turns out, this is one of the oldest recorded South African recipes. The sauce was tamarind based, so I expected it to taste like pad Thai, but it was a very sweet, orange-y flavor. Again, served with saffron rice and tomato relish.

This is a BLT on gluten free bread from Crush, a fresh food cafe and juice bar. (If you’re thinking that bacon looks like ham, it’s what we call Canadian bacon here in the U.S., called British bacon (or just bacon) in South Africa.)

I had this sandwich and a Coke Zero, Joel had a chicken salad sandwich and a large fruit smoothie, and we each bought a bottled water. The bill for this entire meal, including tip, was 160 Rands – about $20! That would barely buy us the two sandwiches here in Seattle!

We got off the ferry from Robben Island at about 3 in the afternoon with empty bellies. Directly across the walkway was Moyo – I said “hey, that looks like a restaurant. Let’s go there.” And it turned out to be one of the best meals we ate in Cape Town.

Above is Phil getting his hands washed (in rosewater!) before our food was served. This is an African tradition to welcome guests for a meal. Yes, we felt very welcomed.

So much so that we went back for our last meal in South Africa. I had a steak with barbeque sauce, roasted veggies, and – French fries! (Sorry, I mean chips.) The folks at Moyo didn’t really know what gluten is, but they went to great lengths to make sure people with allergies (to fish, nuts, etc) could eat safely, so many items were gluten free, even if they didn’t know it.

A few of Joel’s coworkers ate at Balthazar restaurant their first night in Cape Town, and highly recommended it to us. It’s only the number one steakhouse in South Africa! I ate a Caprese salad. It reminded me of Italy.

My picture didn’t turn out, but for my entree, I ate a really delicious piece of Kingklip, a fish found exclusively in the southern hemisphere. I found out later (okay, just now when I googled it) that it’s a type of eel.

Which is not as weird as what Joel ate – ostrich steak with monkeygland sauce. It’s a sauce made with fruit and spices, but we laughed our butts off at the name monkeygland sauce.

I’ll talk more about eating at Bushman’s Kloof in posts next week, but here’s a typical tea time – my own special plate with a tomato and cucumber sandwich, an egg salad sandwich, and some mushroom quiches. I tried, I really tried, to like those mushroom quiches, but I couldn’t quite do it.

On the next plate is a lemon meringue and a chocolate cupcake. They had GF chocolate muffins for me at breakfast everyday, and chocolate cupcakes at tea. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but they were exactly the same thing. I averaged 3 chocolate muffin-cakes every day we were there.

And in the back is a big glass of their signature rooibos tea.

Now that we’re home, I found a tin of Tazo vanilla rooibos tea, and I’ve been drinking it every day. It reminds me of Africa 🙂