In the past two months, two restaurants have opened that prominently feature gluten-free items. The first is Pizza Fusion, which is trying to appeal to people with food restrictions. The second, as KC Lunch Spots pointed out, is Daniel's Bar-B-Q, in all other ways a normal Kansas City barbecue restaurant.
Andee Hindery of gluten-free bakery Astrocakes has a gluten allergy herself. She says most gluten-free restaurants are found through the grapevine. "It's a small but tightknit community, and the word spreads very quickly about new places."
The amount of gluten an allergic person can handle varies widely. Gluten is present in all strains of wheat, which means bread, pasta and cookies are out. "When the Atkins Diet was big, it was easy to eat out because it is very close to a gluten-free diet. Basically you avoid carbs, which really limits choices, so you end up going to the same places," Hindery said.
One of those places is Waldo Pizza, which carries gluten-free cookies,
muffins and pizza. Waldo's crust and desserts are made by Olivia's Oven, which also supplies various grocery stores and other restaurants, such as Grand Street Cafe. Hindery says Lulu's Noodles also has great gluten-free options.
Jane Zieha of Blue Bird Bistro says people ask what's gluten-free and what's not. "Our staff is trained to answer
all those types of questions. We make everything to order and we buy as much local
food as we can. Consequently, we know exactly what's in our food."
Besides altering certain ingredients in dishes, such as putting a
bison burger between two tomatoes instead of a bun, Zieha says Blue Bird uses sorghum
flour in some dishes, like the dessert green-tea chocolate torte. They also offer beer from the gluten-free brewery Bard's Tale.
But
even though Kansas City has gluten-free noodles, bakeries and
pizzas, a lot of niches remain. "I get a million calls
for gluten-free bread and birthday cake. There's more demand than
supply," Hindrey says. "Say you wanted to get a fresh muffin. I can't
tell you where to go."
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I just spenet the weekend at the Crown Plaza downtown, Kansas City, MO and had excellent experiences in their City Grill. Chef Sam Cross came right out to the table, very familiar with gluten free cooking, offered me options each night. The food was superb--I enjoyed it immensely. My server was Lisa--also very helpfu. I highly recommend it if you can get this chef.
We, at One More Cup, will be offering various gluten free treats from Olivia's Oven starting tomorrow actually! Cupcakes, donut holes, cookies, brownies, and muffins...mmm.
I work at Grand Street Cafe and not only do we offer gluten free products, but all our servers know what dishes contain gluten and how to make them accessable to a gluten free diet. All our dishes are made to order so there is always a way to make a substitution to make a dish for a gluten free diet.
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