Apr 7, 2009 5
When Your Go-To Gluten-Free Spots, Aren’t
And then there were four three.
Ever since I was diagnosed in the fall of 2007, I’ve been whittling down my list of safe restaurants. Luckily, Chicago affords a Celiac more options than many cities. That said, plenty of them are fancy shmancy and over my budget. In the past year, I finally brought my number of truly trusted restaurants to four. I’d talked to the managers at one point or another, and was comfortable with their cooking practices and their level of commitment to avoiding allergens. Oh and the food tasted…good.
Of those four, Marcello’s Pizza on the North Side of Chicago offered a delicious gluten-free rice crust that many of my non-celiac friends enjoyed eating as well. Tasted great, got to my house quickly, complete with a little gluten-free sticker slapped over the edge like a safety seal. It satisfied that itch. The itch that makes you wish you could eat pizza again, or more to the point, the itch of that pre-celiac feeling of a delivered pizza: Call up the restaurant, they make you a pizza, they drive it over, I take 3-4 greasy pieces, laugh at the movie with my friends, throw the box in the fridge: more for the next evening. It felt normal, and I typically don’t feel normal when presented with a place setting at dinner.
But a couple hours after my last pizza from Marcello’s, I realized something had gone awry, despite the “hermetically” sealed GF sticker. My toppings were all free and clear, unless they surgically injected gluten into the peppers and onion. That leaves the sauce and crust, and my money is on the crust. I’m sure it was prepared on the same board with gluten-soaked crusts, and maybe some flour was actually kneaded into my rice crust.
Regardless, the damage was done. So now, a question of loyalty, forgiveness, and anger. Do I just give them a piece of my mind, let them know what happend (and potentially help a fellow celiac if its a systemic problem), then ask to me transfered to the hostess so I can place another order for delivery? Do I write them off as unsafe, never to go back again? Somewhere between?
I’d love to hear how people who’ve dealt with CD for much longer than me if they have any horror stories, and more importantly how they handled the aftermath…







