Gluten-Free Gourmet

More consumers are battling food allergies and looking for restaurants to cater to them.

Italian pizzas and pastas, Chinese noodles, American beers, and burgers—going out to eat can be a gluttony of gluten. That means for the more than two million Americans who are intolerant to gluten (the protein found in wheat, barley, and rye), dining out is difficult.

Not anymore.

Thanks to some accommodating and flexible menu making, customers and owners alike are finding it’s easy to be gluten-free.

It’s a good thing, too, because gluten-intolerance and food allergies aren’t going away. In fact, their incidence rates have been on the rise for the last decade. Celiac disease, the most severe form of gluten intolerance, is a genetic autoimmune disorder that affects about 1 percent of Americans, a majority of who are not diagnosed.

But many celiac sufferers and allergic Americans won’t be kept from dining at their favorite restaurant, even if that establishment specializes in the very thing that makes them sick.
“There are some people who are allergic to garlic and want Italian food,” says Jason Parker, chef at Maggiano’s Little Italy in Nashville, Tennessee.

So what’s a restaurant owner to do?

It turns out that catering to this crowd is not a difficult undertaking and could be a mutually beneficial endeavor.

“It’s not a hassle at all,” says Michael Sullivan, proprietor of Outback Steakhouse in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. “It just means a couple extra pieces of equipment, some separate stuff on the line, like tongs for salad.”

Outback features a separate gluten-free menu, which was
developed a few years ago with the help of the Gluten Intolerance Group.
“It was very easy to alter our existing menu,” Sullivan says. “For example, we make the fresh steamed vegetables gluten-free by steaming them without butter.”

At the Nashville Maggiano’s, the staff takes a pro-active approach: while taking orders, servers ask the table if any allergies exist. If any do, a chef comes to the table to talk the party through the menu.

“We can create whatever they want, minus the allergen,” Parker says. “These dishes are not handed to the expo—they are specifically handled by the chef.”

“Several people are regulars because of the way we treat the allergies,” he adds. “They get what they want, and we get a customer who comes back.”