Post by Silly Yak on Feb 12, 2011 7:40:22 GMT
Soup Plantation/Sweet Tomatoes restaurants
Kathy B
...
These buffet-type restaurants are located in California,
Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Washington, Georgia,
Oregon, Texas and North Carolina. They have wonderful, fresh
soups, salads, and baked potatoes for celiacs. Also have fresh
bread, muffins and pasta for the non-celiacs. Each station or
area of the restaurant maintains binders with all ingredients.
For example, at the soup station, you can ask to see the list of
ingredients for the soups they are serving that day. It even
lists the ingredients for the vegetable stock base. At the
salad area, you can ask to see a binder with the ingredients for
the salad dressings.
I have found the ranch dressing and the following soups to be
GF: Squash, Vegetarian Vegetable, Irish Potato Leek, Lentils -&-
Brown Rice, Santa Fe Black Bean Chili (my favorite); Vegetarian
Southwest; Tomato Cream and Vegetarian Medley. I should also
mention that I also checked to make sure these were vegetarian
(can you tell ). They may have had other soups that were GF
but not veg. I would recommend you check the binders of the
restaurant you choose, since I'm not sure they all use the same
recipe.
This is my favorite place to eat. If you're worried about them
serving bread and pasta as well, they are kept in separate areas
and I don't think it would pose a problem. Best wishes!
gfkitchen.community.everyone.net/
***************************
USA camping adventure tours ...
Posted by Cath... on 20/7/2009
GF board
Hi there, I've just got back from travelling around California, with brief dips into Arizona and Nevada, here are my tips and experiences which might be a bit different to other holiday experiences as I was doing an adventure trek & mainly not eating out. Places I did eat out:
San Diego & California wide
Ate at Pizza Fusion, very nice pizza, quite healthy tasting, plus they stock Green's GF beer. Chain but check as not all locations do the GF pizza.
San Fransisco
Fisherman's Grotto - websites indicated they catered for GF but in fact they have stopped doing the GF menu and "don't have a chef" (???worrying). We ate there anyway but I wouldn't recommend! Expensive and bland and lots of other places are nearby with nicer locations, you might as well try one of those.
Various locations, mainly California & West Coast
In and out burger - get a burger "protein style" and it comes wrapped in lettuce, really nice and fresh and staff are helpful e.g. had no problems with them cleaning a section of grill for me but I didn't always bother to ask and I was always OK with them.
Wendy's - staff had never heard of the GF menu, which is on the wendy's website. Ate there once, personally thought the food was disgusting regardless of whether or not it is GF, only nice thing was the milkshake dessert thing.
Las Vegas
The Rainforest Cafe inside MGM has a GF menu, be warned it only has 4 items on it though! But the chef came out to talk to me and came back again to check everything was OK and the food I had was actually very tasty which was a rare thing!
Inside New York New York I ate at a place called American grill, it was a bit of a faff but again the chef came out and sorted something for me, which I suppose was very good of them at 12.30 at night (we failed to find anywhere in time before going to a show earlier on!) but it was very bland.
Caesar's palace - Planet Hollywood - they tried but failed, I got glutened ..it was a bit annoying as this was a group outing for my tour group but the tour leader forgot or didn't think to ask about GF when booking, and the first response I got on arriving was they couldn't do anything, eventually I got a chef and it all seemed OK but I don't think he did the actual cooking, something happened anyway as I was pretty bad the whole next day.
LA and Hollywood
We found a sushi place on Sunset Boulevard which was helpful and fine, although all I had was sashimi, so hard to get any gluten in that one.
Inside the big shopping centre next to the chinese theatre I ate at a grill place on the top floor, sorry can't remember the name, but it was the posh looking one towards the back! They were helpful but the food was so gross, just a huge plate of steamed or grilled vegetables (it seemed a good idea at the time, my diet was lacking in vegetables! but not all in one go...ouch...not good on the old insides!)
General USA stuff
Garage coffees and creamers
I'm pretty sure I was glutened by putting creamer in my coffee from a gas station coffee stop, there wasn't anything else I'd suspect. Had plenty of other gas station coffees that were fine, actual milk was available and they're pretty good for having real coffee available, not from a machine. I never used a coffee machine. I did chance it with other creamers earlier in the trip and was fine but be careful!
Supermarkets
Shopping I found the most difficult, it is really really hard to find GF labels in most supermarkets, you just won't find them. GF stuff didn't ever seem to be in its own section, you have to traipse around pasta, bread etc, looking for the 1 thing you want, and pretty much everywhere I asked for helop I got the "alien from another planet stare". You actually need to know which companies have a policy to label gluten or gluten ingredients because in the US they have to label if there is wheat but not for barley, rye or oats. Kraft foods do have this policy so that is one I knew to trust, they will always list barley, rye etc, if there is any in there. Other companies like Lays (crisps) or Heinz you need a print out list to help you shop. Completely different to here! Supermarkets I experienced:
Trader Joe's - the best one and I'd recommend choosing one of these if you at all can. Plenty of tasty GF options, again you need to check each section as there isn't a GF section but you can find bread, rice tortillas, flourless cake, pasta, sweet treats, crustless quiche plus there general stuff is well labelled with a lot stating gluten free or no gluten, and helpful things like all their sausage is GF. They don't have GF beer but I did find cider and perry.
Ralph's - very poor, you might find 1 kind of GF biscuit bars and some rice cakes if you're lucky. I got to hating this place because I had to shop there so often, and it was early on so it was where I found out how un-GF america can be!
Henry's - very helpfully had tickets sticking out that say "gluten free" on all relevant items & I found a lot there in only a small store in San Fransisco
Walmart - so depressing I almost cried! I read online that they had released their list of GF items so asked for help at customer services, but they couldn't find it. "we don't do that kind of thing here" was the feeling I got, they didn't have any GF biscuits that I could find, or bread, some pasta was all I got and some pasta sauce labelled GF (sorry I can't remember the brand).
Wholefoods - not quite as good as I imagined for GF. They do have a better selection than most but for bread you have to go to the freezer, it isn't on the general shelves. Their labels don't state GF, and I didn't have internet to check what their policy on labelling was and staff in store didn't know so I was stuffed basically!
Yosemite general store - have GF mac and cheese, yey! That was quite exciting as I had run out at that point!
Grand Canyon Village store - a CD-er working at the grand canyon iMax pointed me to this place, they did have a few basics like again pasta and bread mix but I was camping so bread mix wasn't really what I needed! Tried finding somewhere to eat out but the girl I met with CD who lived there sais there was nowhere and she never eas out which was depressing , I had to skip a group meal there sadly and cook my blooming pasta with cheesy sauce for the millionth time.
Products for anyone else camping
I ate a lot of Annie's or Trader Joe's Mac and cheese - you get a portion sized pack of pasta with powder cheese sauce. What I did a lot was cook the pasta, once cooked drain water and add some GF pasta sauce to the pan then the cheese powder so you get a sort of cheesy tomatoey pasta, all in 1 pan, which is good if you're sharing with a group who have to cook too, like I did.
I wish I'd discovered trader joe's rice tortillas earlier as they'd be great for snacking on the move, pack some cooked meats or cheese and make up sandwiches on the go.
Again to make things a bit easier I bought things like little salad packs of ready chopped onion or peppers to add some vegetables to my diet.
I also drank quite a bit of V8 for some vegetables! It tastes like cold vegetable soup or maybe a bit like a bloody mary if you use your imagination!
Trader Joe's rice bread was actually paletable enough to eat for sandwiches without toasting.
I generally kept a couple of energy bars & other snacks in a little cool bag in the van for on the go. Things like sliced cheese, cooked ham, crisps or rice cakes, mainly got me through it.
For breakfast I found good granola at Henry's and Trader Joe's, which didn't really need milk (hard to keep fresh when camping and hard to find portion sized bottles as americans like everything huge!). Otherwise I tried both rice and corn chex, they look like shreddies, and taste OK but very bland & you definitely need milk.
Think Thin protein bar, the chocolate crunch one, is quite nice and chocolatey, don't think it has helped my waistline any though!
********************
West Coast USA
Posted by Mark IOW on 6/8/2009
GF board
Have just come back from a tour of the West Coast and thought that the followwing might be of interest:
- Labelling of allergens in products sold in supermarkets is much better than it was when I was last in the USA a couple of years ago. Ready made salads, especially those with chicken, cheese and ham (often called Chef's salad) were normallt gf and often contained a gf dressing. Even the coffee whitener in the hotels was labelled.
- Eating out is still very hit and miss. The Outback Steakhouse have a full gf menu if you ask for it. The extremely large pudding of brownie, sauce, ice cream etc 'Thunder from Down Under' is still gf. One would normally do two people, especially if you've had a steak or their chicken with barbacue sauce.
- Hard Rock cafe offer a number of gf items. The sockeye salmon was excellent.
- The new Westfield Shopping Mall in San Francisco has a great delicatessan which has gf cakes etc.
-I went to 'Bubba Gumps' on the main Pier in SF and they had no problem accommodating me.
- GF cakes are available in the Danish Village of Solvang further down the coast.
- The only place I was glutened was at Universal City Walk where they swore the seasoning was gf but it wasn't.
- I elected not to eat chips etc on my trip because they really do struggle with the contaminated oil issue.I made up for this with the amount of ice cream I ate. Virtually all the main makers' ice creams are gf unless it's cookie dough etc.
I took lots of bread, crackers and biscuits with me and, for the first time ever in the USA, a Customs lady at LA EX Airport asked me if I was carrying any food. I said yes, explained what it was and she said fine, no problem.
Overall, there's still a long way to go eating out in the US but it is getting better
*************************
Fab holiday in Florida - info on places to eat
Posted by Sue S on 5/9/2009
GF Board
Dear All
Just returned from a fab holiday in Florida - toured around but stayed mostly in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. I am lucky enough to have visited Florida on several occasions and, every time, I seem to discover somewhere else to eat.
All the places below have a gluten free menu; when you ask for it as you walk into the restaurant, no-one bats an eyelid but just hands it to you straight away. The waiter/waitress always asked "who's gluten-free?" and generally all seemed pretty knowledgeable or, if they didn't know the answer, happily went off to check with the kitchen. How refreshing just to get fantastic customer service and to be able to walk into a restaurant and know that the menu will be helpful to you with not much guesswork involved!
The best night we had was getting a takeaway from Pizza Fusion and then eating it, sitting on the beach at Fort Lauderdale, under the palm trees....it doesn't get much better than that!
Pizza Fusion
www.pizzafusion.com/menu/what-se ... -free.aspx
P F Chang's
www.pfchangs.com/menu.shtm
Outback
www.outback.com/foodandmenus/index.aspx
Carrabas
www.carrabbas.com/carrabbas-menu.aspx
All in all, a brilliant holiday, didn't take any food with me and did not have one single instance of an "upset tummy".
Oh, and gluten-free meals provided both ways by American Airlines and pretty good they were too!
...
Sue
**********
Re: Fab holiday in Florida - info on places to eat
Posted by AJ on 6/9/2009
GF board
Not long back from Florida too. Glad u had a good time Sue. I wasn't so lucky with my inflight meal coming home (going out was fine) as nothing was packed for me. Luckily the crew rallied round and found me something to eat. The same thing happened last year too, but I just went hungry then as an alternative wasn't found. I have booked to go back next year - 3rd time lucky! This is with Thomas Cook airlines.
I was going to post about P F Chang's - wonderful, ate there 3 times! Couldn't believe it when I asked about gf and she gave me my separate menu.
Also ate at Olive Garden, you need to ask for their 'garden fare' menu and stress no croutons in the salad. You get free breadsticks with every meal ordered but obviously avoid them!
www.olivegarden.com/menus/garden ... atives.asp
We had Pizza Fusion and Carrabas on our list of places to go to but never made it - will defo give them a try next year.
*************
Kathy B
...
These buffet-type restaurants are located in California,
Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Washington, Georgia,
Oregon, Texas and North Carolina. They have wonderful, fresh
soups, salads, and baked potatoes for celiacs. Also have fresh
bread, muffins and pasta for the non-celiacs. Each station or
area of the restaurant maintains binders with all ingredients.
For example, at the soup station, you can ask to see the list of
ingredients for the soups they are serving that day. It even
lists the ingredients for the vegetable stock base. At the
salad area, you can ask to see a binder with the ingredients for
the salad dressings.
I have found the ranch dressing and the following soups to be
GF: Squash, Vegetarian Vegetable, Irish Potato Leek, Lentils -&-
Brown Rice, Santa Fe Black Bean Chili (my favorite); Vegetarian
Southwest; Tomato Cream and Vegetarian Medley. I should also
mention that I also checked to make sure these were vegetarian
(can you tell ). They may have had other soups that were GF
but not veg. I would recommend you check the binders of the
restaurant you choose, since I'm not sure they all use the same
recipe.
This is my favorite place to eat. If you're worried about them
serving bread and pasta as well, they are kept in separate areas
and I don't think it would pose a problem. Best wishes!
gfkitchen.community.everyone.net/
***************************
USA camping adventure tours ...
Posted by Cath... on 20/7/2009
GF board
Hi there, I've just got back from travelling around California, with brief dips into Arizona and Nevada, here are my tips and experiences which might be a bit different to other holiday experiences as I was doing an adventure trek & mainly not eating out. Places I did eat out:
San Diego & California wide
Ate at Pizza Fusion, very nice pizza, quite healthy tasting, plus they stock Green's GF beer. Chain but check as not all locations do the GF pizza.
San Fransisco
Fisherman's Grotto - websites indicated they catered for GF but in fact they have stopped doing the GF menu and "don't have a chef" (???worrying). We ate there anyway but I wouldn't recommend! Expensive and bland and lots of other places are nearby with nicer locations, you might as well try one of those.
Various locations, mainly California & West Coast
In and out burger - get a burger "protein style" and it comes wrapped in lettuce, really nice and fresh and staff are helpful e.g. had no problems with them cleaning a section of grill for me but I didn't always bother to ask and I was always OK with them.
Wendy's - staff had never heard of the GF menu, which is on the wendy's website. Ate there once, personally thought the food was disgusting regardless of whether or not it is GF, only nice thing was the milkshake dessert thing.
Las Vegas
The Rainforest Cafe inside MGM has a GF menu, be warned it only has 4 items on it though! But the chef came out to talk to me and came back again to check everything was OK and the food I had was actually very tasty which was a rare thing!
Inside New York New York I ate at a place called American grill, it was a bit of a faff but again the chef came out and sorted something for me, which I suppose was very good of them at 12.30 at night (we failed to find anywhere in time before going to a show earlier on!) but it was very bland.
Caesar's palace - Planet Hollywood - they tried but failed, I got glutened ..it was a bit annoying as this was a group outing for my tour group but the tour leader forgot or didn't think to ask about GF when booking, and the first response I got on arriving was they couldn't do anything, eventually I got a chef and it all seemed OK but I don't think he did the actual cooking, something happened anyway as I was pretty bad the whole next day.
LA and Hollywood
We found a sushi place on Sunset Boulevard which was helpful and fine, although all I had was sashimi, so hard to get any gluten in that one.
Inside the big shopping centre next to the chinese theatre I ate at a grill place on the top floor, sorry can't remember the name, but it was the posh looking one towards the back! They were helpful but the food was so gross, just a huge plate of steamed or grilled vegetables (it seemed a good idea at the time, my diet was lacking in vegetables! but not all in one go...ouch...not good on the old insides!)
General USA stuff
Garage coffees and creamers
I'm pretty sure I was glutened by putting creamer in my coffee from a gas station coffee stop, there wasn't anything else I'd suspect. Had plenty of other gas station coffees that were fine, actual milk was available and they're pretty good for having real coffee available, not from a machine. I never used a coffee machine. I did chance it with other creamers earlier in the trip and was fine but be careful!
Supermarkets
Shopping I found the most difficult, it is really really hard to find GF labels in most supermarkets, you just won't find them. GF stuff didn't ever seem to be in its own section, you have to traipse around pasta, bread etc, looking for the 1 thing you want, and pretty much everywhere I asked for helop I got the "alien from another planet stare". You actually need to know which companies have a policy to label gluten or gluten ingredients because in the US they have to label if there is wheat but not for barley, rye or oats. Kraft foods do have this policy so that is one I knew to trust, they will always list barley, rye etc, if there is any in there. Other companies like Lays (crisps) or Heinz you need a print out list to help you shop. Completely different to here! Supermarkets I experienced:
Trader Joe's - the best one and I'd recommend choosing one of these if you at all can. Plenty of tasty GF options, again you need to check each section as there isn't a GF section but you can find bread, rice tortillas, flourless cake, pasta, sweet treats, crustless quiche plus there general stuff is well labelled with a lot stating gluten free or no gluten, and helpful things like all their sausage is GF. They don't have GF beer but I did find cider and perry.
Ralph's - very poor, you might find 1 kind of GF biscuit bars and some rice cakes if you're lucky. I got to hating this place because I had to shop there so often, and it was early on so it was where I found out how un-GF america can be!
Henry's - very helpfully had tickets sticking out that say "gluten free" on all relevant items & I found a lot there in only a small store in San Fransisco
Walmart - so depressing I almost cried! I read online that they had released their list of GF items so asked for help at customer services, but they couldn't find it. "we don't do that kind of thing here" was the feeling I got, they didn't have any GF biscuits that I could find, or bread, some pasta was all I got and some pasta sauce labelled GF (sorry I can't remember the brand).
Wholefoods - not quite as good as I imagined for GF. They do have a better selection than most but for bread you have to go to the freezer, it isn't on the general shelves. Their labels don't state GF, and I didn't have internet to check what their policy on labelling was and staff in store didn't know so I was stuffed basically!
Yosemite general store - have GF mac and cheese, yey! That was quite exciting as I had run out at that point!
Grand Canyon Village store - a CD-er working at the grand canyon iMax pointed me to this place, they did have a few basics like again pasta and bread mix but I was camping so bread mix wasn't really what I needed! Tried finding somewhere to eat out but the girl I met with CD who lived there sais there was nowhere and she never eas out which was depressing , I had to skip a group meal there sadly and cook my blooming pasta with cheesy sauce for the millionth time.
Products for anyone else camping
I ate a lot of Annie's or Trader Joe's Mac and cheese - you get a portion sized pack of pasta with powder cheese sauce. What I did a lot was cook the pasta, once cooked drain water and add some GF pasta sauce to the pan then the cheese powder so you get a sort of cheesy tomatoey pasta, all in 1 pan, which is good if you're sharing with a group who have to cook too, like I did.
I wish I'd discovered trader joe's rice tortillas earlier as they'd be great for snacking on the move, pack some cooked meats or cheese and make up sandwiches on the go.
Again to make things a bit easier I bought things like little salad packs of ready chopped onion or peppers to add some vegetables to my diet.
I also drank quite a bit of V8 for some vegetables! It tastes like cold vegetable soup or maybe a bit like a bloody mary if you use your imagination!
Trader Joe's rice bread was actually paletable enough to eat for sandwiches without toasting.
I generally kept a couple of energy bars & other snacks in a little cool bag in the van for on the go. Things like sliced cheese, cooked ham, crisps or rice cakes, mainly got me through it.
For breakfast I found good granola at Henry's and Trader Joe's, which didn't really need milk (hard to keep fresh when camping and hard to find portion sized bottles as americans like everything huge!). Otherwise I tried both rice and corn chex, they look like shreddies, and taste OK but very bland & you definitely need milk.
Think Thin protein bar, the chocolate crunch one, is quite nice and chocolatey, don't think it has helped my waistline any though!
********************
West Coast USA
Posted by Mark IOW on 6/8/2009
GF board
Have just come back from a tour of the West Coast and thought that the followwing might be of interest:
- Labelling of allergens in products sold in supermarkets is much better than it was when I was last in the USA a couple of years ago. Ready made salads, especially those with chicken, cheese and ham (often called Chef's salad) were normallt gf and often contained a gf dressing. Even the coffee whitener in the hotels was labelled.
- Eating out is still very hit and miss. The Outback Steakhouse have a full gf menu if you ask for it. The extremely large pudding of brownie, sauce, ice cream etc 'Thunder from Down Under' is still gf. One would normally do two people, especially if you've had a steak or their chicken with barbacue sauce.
- Hard Rock cafe offer a number of gf items. The sockeye salmon was excellent.
- The new Westfield Shopping Mall in San Francisco has a great delicatessan which has gf cakes etc.
-I went to 'Bubba Gumps' on the main Pier in SF and they had no problem accommodating me.
- GF cakes are available in the Danish Village of Solvang further down the coast.
- The only place I was glutened was at Universal City Walk where they swore the seasoning was gf but it wasn't.
- I elected not to eat chips etc on my trip because they really do struggle with the contaminated oil issue.I made up for this with the amount of ice cream I ate. Virtually all the main makers' ice creams are gf unless it's cookie dough etc.
I took lots of bread, crackers and biscuits with me and, for the first time ever in the USA, a Customs lady at LA EX Airport asked me if I was carrying any food. I said yes, explained what it was and she said fine, no problem.
Overall, there's still a long way to go eating out in the US but it is getting better
*************************
Fab holiday in Florida - info on places to eat
Posted by Sue S on 5/9/2009
GF Board
Dear All
Just returned from a fab holiday in Florida - toured around but stayed mostly in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. I am lucky enough to have visited Florida on several occasions and, every time, I seem to discover somewhere else to eat.
All the places below have a gluten free menu; when you ask for it as you walk into the restaurant, no-one bats an eyelid but just hands it to you straight away. The waiter/waitress always asked "who's gluten-free?" and generally all seemed pretty knowledgeable or, if they didn't know the answer, happily went off to check with the kitchen. How refreshing just to get fantastic customer service and to be able to walk into a restaurant and know that the menu will be helpful to you with not much guesswork involved!
The best night we had was getting a takeaway from Pizza Fusion and then eating it, sitting on the beach at Fort Lauderdale, under the palm trees....it doesn't get much better than that!
Pizza Fusion
www.pizzafusion.com/menu/what-se ... -free.aspx
P F Chang's
www.pfchangs.com/menu.shtm
Outback
www.outback.com/foodandmenus/index.aspx
Carrabas
www.carrabbas.com/carrabbas-menu.aspx
All in all, a brilliant holiday, didn't take any food with me and did not have one single instance of an "upset tummy".
Oh, and gluten-free meals provided both ways by American Airlines and pretty good they were too!
...
Sue
**********
Re: Fab holiday in Florida - info on places to eat
Posted by AJ on 6/9/2009
GF board
Not long back from Florida too. Glad u had a good time Sue. I wasn't so lucky with my inflight meal coming home (going out was fine) as nothing was packed for me. Luckily the crew rallied round and found me something to eat. The same thing happened last year too, but I just went hungry then as an alternative wasn't found. I have booked to go back next year - 3rd time lucky! This is with Thomas Cook airlines.
I was going to post about P F Chang's - wonderful, ate there 3 times! Couldn't believe it when I asked about gf and she gave me my separate menu.
Also ate at Olive Garden, you need to ask for their 'garden fare' menu and stress no croutons in the salad. You get free breadsticks with every meal ordered but obviously avoid them!
www.olivegarden.com/menus/garden ... atives.asp
We had Pizza Fusion and Carrabas on our list of places to go to but never made it - will defo give them a try next year.
*************