NYC - Gluten Free Options Near Tourist Sites

We were in NYC several times this summer. KT was born in NYC but this is the first time back that she will remember. So we did all of the touristy things again.

This is a guide of gluten free options we found near tourist sites that we visited, starting from the most southern point of the island.Statue of Liberty
The cafe at Liberty island is a certified "green restaurant."
We were able to eat the french fries, grapes, and organic lemonade.
We did not have the same luck at Ellis Island, I am not sure if it was just miss communication with the staff or if the fries are indeed cooked in shared fryers there, we did not take the chance.
Be sure to read the info about reserving tickets.

Coney Island
We had lots of fun but the only safe things for a GF vegetarian was the fresh mango sold on the boardwalk. Take your own food!


South Street Seaport
This is a mall on the Pier, also called Pier 17. Here you will find shops, restaurants, street shows and exhibits. There is also an outdoor market on the weekends in the summer months. Visit the website for a directory of offerings: SouthStreetSeaport.com.

• Haagen Dazs Ice Cream - Gluten Info - Allergy List (jpg file)
• Uno Chicago Grill - Extensive Gluten Free Menu
  

Battery Park City & World Financial Center
We lived in Battery Park City pre-GF diet. We were happy to find so many great options have developed there.

• Pizza Bolla - Awesome Gluten free pizza, pasta, lasagna, garlic bread, & Red bridge. Prices seemed a little high when we looked at the menu but the portion sizes made up for it. It is located in the same building as the Embassy Suites. 102 North End Ave. Check out the CelicChicks blog on PizzaBolla with lots of great photos.
• Whole Foods - 200 Greenwich Street with all that Whole Foods offers GF- frozen, deli, packaged goods...
• Sprout Craft - An amazing find for a vegetarian celiac, this is a raw foods place with a glutenfree buffet from 11 - 2. Located at Maiden lane and Broadway inside the "health Exchange" deli.
  

West Village
Our FAVORITE place of the whole summer was Petite Cafe's Gluten Free French Toast on Saturday mornings. 70 Greenwich Ave between 11th Street and 7th Ave. (212) 229-0804 See Celiac Chick's review with great pictures.

SOHO
Check out the free childrens events at Scholastic Store the children's art workshops at Children's Museum of Arts.

• Hampton Chutney - One of our favorites! South Indian dosa with a variety of fillings, all gluten free!
• Baby Cakes - A vegan and gluten free bakery.

Chelsea Market

• Friedman's Lunch - This place is so good it makes you feel normal. (It is totally worth the trek into the meat-packing district!) Mouth-watering soups, salads, lentil dishes, sandwiches, bread, fries. Located in the back of the Chelsea Market at 15th Street and 9th Ave. (The Apple Store is right next door.)

Empire State Building
There is not much that is really close to here, but if you take the M2,3,or5 Bus down 5th Ave to 23rd Street there are some options.

• Asia De Cuba @ 237 Madison Avenue @ 37th has a gluten free menu
• Cup Cake Stop- A van that offers Gluten Free Cupcakes on Tuesdays when they park at 5th Ave and 23rd Street.
• Mozarelli's Pizza offers gluten free cookies, pizza and cakes everyday. 38 E 23rd St Between Park and Madison.
  

Grand Central Station
Don't miss the MTA Transit Museum and store located inside the terminal.
Also many free children's events at the NY Library

• Hale & Hearty Soups - Located in the dining concourse. They have at least 10 gluten free soups each day, just ask the server to look at the card attached to each pot lid to see if the soup is marked gluten free. Most dressings are also gluten free, the server can give you the list. You can also have a salad mixed to order.
  
• Blooms Deli @ 40th and Lexington Avenue has GF french fries, diner foods, sandwiches, slaw, pickles, pancakes...

Times Square

• Ruby Foos - Located next to the M&M Store. This was just right for our vegetarian gluten free crew, however we spoke to a couple other gf families dining there and they felt there was very little for their kids to eat here. Take a look at their GF menu online. Reservations are recommended. On Sunday afternoon they do have origami activities for kids.
  

Rockefeller Center
American Girl, Build A Bear Workshop, The Disney Store and FAO Schwartz are all on the 5th Ave side of Rockefeller Center. There is not any good options for food in this immediate area so plan accordingly.

• American Girl Cafe - 609 5th Ave @ 49th Street. Be sure to call ahead and get reservations and tell them you require gluten free. We have been to all of the American Girl Cafe's and this one was not great with the GF options, there were no GF baked goods, no cup cakes, no pizzas available. But they will work to accommodate the regular menu minus the bread.
  
• Hale & Hearty Soups - Located in the underground shopping area.
  
• Farmer's Market - In the summer there was a neat little farmer's market here, we bought dried and fresh fruit to snack on.
• Lilli 57 - Located across the street from Carnegie Hall. They had a couple nice gf vegetarian dishes including a raw summer roll. GF menu is online.
  

Central Park

• Ice Cream Carts- There were several things on the ice cream cart that were gluten free.
• Wollman Ice Rink - Only a couple options here: garden salad with Kraft dressing, fruit cup, lays potato chips and fresh squeezed OJ.
• Lilli & Lo0 - a few blocks away at 61st and Lex, a similar GF menu to Lilli 57.
  

Museum of Natural History
The food court offers a couple options. They had french fries that were fine, salad bar and organic GF salad dressing. There may have been other options at the other restaurants.

Upper West Side
Children's Museum of Manhattan is located at at 83rd & Broadway. Save your ticket/sticker and you can come and go all day.

• Hale & Hearty Soups - 81st & Broadway
  
• Nice Matin is an organic "Green Restaurant" in the area. We did not eat there but were told they have several options.79th and Amsterdam
• Hampton Chutney - One of our favorites! South Indian Dosa with a variety of fillings, all gluten free!
• Peacefood Cafe - Located just down the block from Hampton Chutney. They have raw foods, smoothies and several gf desserts.
  

Museum Row (Art Museums)
Be sure to ask for the family activity guides at the information desks of the museums.

• Peter's Cafe - Located at 83rd Street and First Ave. You can take a nice walk or a bus on 86th street from the 86th and Lex subway station near the museums.
  

New York Botanical Garden
Only options we found at the cafe was potato chips or fruit. However, KT picked a bag full of produce in the Children's Garden and we made a great salad at home that night! Mesculin, cherry tomatoes and lemon basil... Pack a lunch before you make the trip, then Bloom's Deli when you get back to Grand Central.

Bronx Zoo
All we found to be safe here was, Dirty Chips, Terra Chips, fresh watermelon, fresh mixed fruit, Snapple. Recommend taking your own food.


Resources for NYC:

• CeliacTable.org - A great resource to look up the closest GF place to dine. Directory is reviewed and also divided geographically.
• Celiac Chick's Blog - this is our favorite blog to follow about GF living in NYC. Lots of great reviews and tips.
• GlutenFreed iphone app, this is how we found Hampton Chutney- we are forever grateful!
• Gluten Free NYC - a new app that has great potential, lists verified gf options at many non-gf restaurants in NYC.

Backpacking Europe Veg and GF with Child

We just returned from a 10 day trip to Europe. We spent 5 days on a backpacking trial-run and had 100% success gluten free and vegetarian. We plan to do a month long trip in a few years when my daughter gets older. We carried only a backpack with change of clothes an all of our electronics (nintendo, iphone, ipods, and cameras). We did not have room for much food. I knew we would have good luck finding food so we just carried a few bars and packaged nuts.

We traveled to Amsterdam, Marken and Volendam in the Netherlands, Paris, Brussels, London and Windsor. We traveled by train, stayed at 1 star hotels. We had no problem finding food, actually it was easier than finding Gluten Free food at home!

We traveled by train from city to city, we took mostly Thalys and EuroStar trains and were able to pre-order gluten free meals on most of the trains. The train stations in Brussels and London had great gluten free options at the airport and train stations.

London Heathrow Airport - British Airlines International Connections (Terminal 5, After Security)
Wagamama
http://www.wagamama.com
http://wagamama.com/food/dietary/wheatandglutenintolerant
Has a gluten free menu with excellent stir fry, noodle soups, miso soup and rice dishes.
They have locations all over the world. They had an extensive special diets menu.
(We also ate at Wagamama in London, at the Windsor Central train station, and in Amsterdam)

Wagamama #38 Yasai Itame
Grilled bok choy, fried tofu, red and spring onions, red peppers portabello
mushrooms, and bean sprouts served with rice noodles in a coconut and
green chili soup, garnished with coriander, mint and a lime wedge.
Naturally GF and Veg!

London Heathrow Airport
EAT.
http://www.eat.co.uk - In Terminals 3 and 5
All salads and soups are marked if they are vegetarian and or gluten free.
They have locations all over the UK at airports and train stations as well.

YoSushi
http://www.yosushi.com/ in Terminal 3
They had a menu listing all allergens and what dishes were safe or could be modified.

Brussels Midi Train Station
EXKI
http://www.exki.be
Had salads and soups that were marked if they were vegetarian and gluten free. Also sold packaged rice cakes.

Paddington Station in London
Salade
http://salade.co.uk
Had salads, soya deserts, juice bar, salad bar everything was marked if it was gluten free and vegetarian.

YoSushi
http://www.yosushi.com/
They had a menu listing all allergens and what dishes were safe or could be modified.


Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
Amsterdam City
Amsterdam Central Train Station
Albert Heijn Grocery Stores
http://www.ah.nl
They had an extensive selection of packaged salads that were marked as gluten free. Our favorite find there was "KoKos Sticks" which were slices of fresh coconut and a mango puree to dip them in. They had great packaged salads. The store also sell gluten free bread in the bakery at some locations, the bread is in the back in the freezer.
Amsterdam Health food Stores

DeNatuurwinkel (several locations)
http://www.denatuurwinkel.com
A organic healthfood store near the Rembrandt House. A gold mine for gluten free breads, crackers, cakes, homeopathics, and organic foods.

Paris Health Food Stores
Naturalia - http://www.naturalia.fr/
Touch of Bio - http://www.happycow.net/europe/france/paris/
Both places sold organic packaged gluten free items by Valpiform and Schar. Naturalia has fresh GF bread that you could order daily.

LegoLand Windsor
http://www.legoland.co.uk/park/Food+and+Drink/vegetarians.htm
They had gluten free and vegetarian foods available at 2 of the main restaurants as well as charts available at the park showing which foods were safe for a variety of special diets. We were able to eat a traditional English breakfast here and it was naturally gluten free and vegetarian- scrambled eggs, baked beans, hash browns. In the Italian restaurant we had an awesome broccoli risotto. The "chips" were gluten free at all of the restaurants. ("chips" = french fries.)

(Wagamama is also at Windsor Central Station)

Paris & Amsterdam
Maoz Vegetarian
http://www.maozusa.com/
Sadly we cannot eat their falafel but we could can eat their hummus and many things on their salad bar. At several locations the fries were safe. We ate there in Amsterdam and Paris.

Disney World 2009

Just returned from a week at Disney World. This is the ultimate celiac kids vacation spot! I have to admit that I over planned this vacation for fear of being caught in a theme park all day and not having access to food. I just could not believe that there would be so many options.

Pre-Planning
We made our restaurant reservations a couple months in advance. this was tricky because I had to plan what park we would be at when. Having been there now and knowing that the parks are sooooooooo far apart I would have planned differently. I called the Disney Dining line ( (407) WDW-DINE) to get a list of the restaurants that we could eat at. They emailed me lists of fast foods in each park and menus from the restaurants.

Where We Ate
Rainforest Cafe @ AK
We have eaten at this chain all over the country and have always had very friendly reception. However, we did not get the usual friendly reception at Disney. The chef acted like we were a bother. Eventually we got a great meal, they had a fabulous vegetarian stir fry! We ate here three times, twice with reservations and once without.

Sci-Fi Dine In @ HWStudios
This was the most amazing meal we had the entire time. The chef was so friendly and accepted the challenge of making us a gluten free and vegetarian meal. We had an amazing pasta dish with sun dried tomatoes, white beans and capers. We also had a great polenta and pasta dish.

Akershus Royal Banquet Hall @ Epcot
Princess Character Breakfast
This was fun. Not sure it was worth what we paid just to eat Gluten Free vans waffles, fruit and potatoes. But it was fun and it got us in early to the park.

Hollywood & Vine @ HWStudios
Play & Dine Character Breakfast
Again, lots of fun, got us in to the park early but was a bit pricey for waffles and fruit.

Tutto Italia @ Epcot
This was the only bad meal we had. It was also the most expensive meal we had. The service was very slow. We ordered penne pomodoro and it had no taste at all. They did not have the GF bread that so many reviews touted.

Main Street Bakery @ Magic Kingdom
This was an amazing experience. I read in the guide that the reservation line sent us that you could reserve a to-go lunch box here. So I called ahead to do so and the manager took our order over the phone and sent us an email confirmation. When we arrived at the park we walked right up to the counter and gave our name and our meal was ready in minutes. My husband (non veg) had a GF Philly Cheesesteak and KT and I had Veggie sandwiches on GF rolls. Both meals came with fries and GF brownies.

Our Hotel
We did not stay at a Disney property because My husband's convention was at the Gaylord Palms. We emailed ahead to the hotel to tell them that we needed gluten free and vegetarian meals. We arrived at midnight and were able to get a wonderful gluten free pasta and garlic bread when we arrived, after a long day of travel. The chef even made us veggie sandwiches to take on the plane with us on the return trip home.

Resources
DizAbled
This website and book has great info for a variety of special issues including food allergies.
http://www.diz-abled.com/Disney-World-Restaurants-Menus.htm

Of Vegetarian Interest
A must see/do ride is the Living with the Land ride at Epcot. This is totally amazing! This is a boat ride through the Disney Greenhouse where you get to see new farming technologies that Disney is researching to make agriculture more efficient and environmentally friendly. Warning to Vegans the fish farming part might be a little disturbing. The vertical farming and creative greenhouse was fascinating. Not sure how I felt about the biotech stuff, but overall it was interesting.

This photo is not upside down, these watermelons are growing from the
rafters in the Land at Disney's Epcot!

Cairo, Egypt

Just returned from week in Cairo. Another gluten free success!

I did tons of research on vegetarian options but we did not use any of it because we had had a Guide assigned to us that took care of everything for us because of the business my husband was doing there.

Actually, I am not sure this post will be much help to anyone visiting there other than to know that it is possible to have a great trip and eat vegetarian and gluten free.

We stayed at the Marriott in Mirage City. This is one of the nicest hotels I have ever stayed in. There were several restaurants in the hotel and food was available around the clock. The chef fixed us whatever we wanted. There were not any gluten free breads available but we ate VERY well, maybe too well! Our favorite was the Italian Restaurant, believe it or not. They had great soups, salads and the best gnocchi I have ever had.

We carried gluten free crackers with us everywhere. This came in handy for KT at the long dinners.

We ate almost all of our meals in the hotel, only one was on a Nile boat KhulKhal and it was ordered for us by our guide and was a very nice rice and vegetable dish.


Places we visited:

• Pharaonic Village, A living history museum that recreates life in ancient Egypt. A great place to take children!
• Great Pyramids of Giza
• Cairo Tower
• Egyptian Museum
• Khan el-Khalili Market

Our only struggle on this trip was the airline connection through Paris CDG airport. We had a 5 hour layover between the US and Cairo. There was very little that was suitable to eat and we were starving. My advice is not to connect in Paris- London or Amsterdam have much better options for veg and gluten free foods.

Chicago Itinerary

Another City, another success! 100% Veg and Gluten Free!

Here is our trip info from Chicago.

ARRIVE SUNDAY 8 AM

• Breakfast at Whole Foods (Huron & State)
• Walk to American Girl Store (Chicago and Michigan)
• Lunch at American Girl store (GF Pizza and GF Cupcakes!)
• Take bus to Art Institute
• Wall through Millennium Park
• Check into Hotel (City Center at Ohio and Fairbanks - not sure I would stay there again, not bad just better choices available.)
• Dinner at Big Bowl (Ohio & Rush, great gluten free/veg options)
• Walk a couple blocks to Whole Foods (bought GF banana bread, fruit, soy milk for breakfast and snacks like chips, power bars and water, cookies)

MONDAY

• Ate breakfast in the room (soymilk, fruit, banana bread)
• 9:00 AM took Bus 2 to Field Museum (there is NOTHING you can eat at their cafe, we took snacks)
• Took a Bus up Michigan Ave
• Ate lunch at Noodles and Company (On two things you can eat, it was okay- not a place I would return to. Fast food pad thai is not my favorite. There is a Whole Foods not far from the museums, but would be easiest to get to if you had a car:)
• Back to the American Girl Store
• Bus #66 to hotel
• Dinner at Wildfire (Awesome!!!! You may need reservations but this was worth every penny we paid! They even had Gluten free beer and burger buns!) http://www.wildfirerestaurant.com/
• Back to Whole Foods for breakfast items...

TUESDAY

• Breakfast in hotelroom
• 10:00 AM Swirlz Cupcakes (took red line to Fullerton)
• Walked to Nature Museum and Zoo
• Planned to have lunch at Adobo Grill but they were not open for lunch so we ate at Chipolte
• Walked down to Museum of Modern Art, American Girl Store again:)
• Navy Pier and Children's museum (could have spent 3 days at this place)
• Ate salads at McDonalds
• Dinner at Big Bowl
• Wholefoods again to buy snacks and breakfast

WEDNESDAY

• 10:00 AM Architecture Foundation and Exhibit
• 11:00 AM Museum of Science and Industry (took lots of snacks because this is far away- but we did not eat much because we were so distracted by the amount of things to do at this museum)
• Lunch at Chiplote
• Museum of Modern Art again
• 5:00 took car to DaLuciano's (Amazing! you must try this place. Be sure to call for reservations. Carnivore Husband had meat ravioli with meat sauce and fried calamari, I had eggplant parmesan and my daughter filled up on garlic bread before she even got her pasta primavera but mysteriously had room for GF tiramisu and cream puffs!) 8343 W Grand. Our driver took Grand straight there, took about 45 minutes from our hotel. Was perfect on the way to the airport, only about 20 minutes to the airport in a cab.
• 8:30 PM flight home.

We did not eat at all of the places we planned, some where too far away when we got hungry. Next trip we will eat at VegeDiner, Balanced Kitchen (GF and Vegan) and also Adobo Grill.

Here is a list of restaurants in the Chicago area: http://csagc.park-ridge.il.us/restaurantlist.htm

Budapest or Bust (Rules of traveling to Eastern Europe with only the clothes on your back)

We connected through London on a day when travelers were not allowed to take more than one handbag as carry-on. Everything else had to be checked. We carried on a few snacks and all of our electronics. We checked all of our adapters, staple GF food, clothes, charger cords for our electronics...)

Can you guess where this is going?

We had nothing but the clothes on our backs and a bunch of electronics that were about out of charge and 4 plastic lizard toys KT acquired at some point in an airport.

RULE #1
Pack a few things you need for the first night just in case your luggage gets lost. (ie, toothbrush, soap, underwear!)

RULE #2
Don't pack allergy medication in your checked luggage.

RULE #3
The quart size ziplock is meant for some travel sized toiletries not a variety of homeopathic jet lag sprays. Okay, the let lag sprays came in handy but toothpaste would have been great!

RULE #4
When the airplane gives you $150 allowance because your luggage is late, don't go splurge on vegetarian sushi and then wait until after 7:00 pm to try to find gluten free toothpaste, shampoo and soap.

Since we had no luggage to take to our hotel we set out to explore the area without thinking the luggage would never show up. At 7:00 Pm we got a little panicked when we realized we needed to find gluten free toiletries. We did find a homeopathic safe toothpaste and hypoallergenic soap at a pharmacy. Fortunately Boiron is the Merk of Europe and every pharmacy carries homeopathic remedies and homeopathic toothpaste.

We went to our self catering apartment and then realized that we had no clothes and no toiletries.

RULE #5
When using the all-in-one washer-dryer in your Eastern European self catering apartment check to see if there is a handle on the outside of the washing machine before you put all of you remove all of your clothes and put them inside and shut the door.

So here we are now with no clothes! We we went to bed and decided to deal with it in the morning. Maybe our luggage would come. My obsessing mind had it all worked out. I could wear the two items we had not tried to wash- David's jeans and Katie's nightgown (a stretch) and go buy clothes for everyone else. In the morning, no luggage. But we did figure out how to get the washer open. Se we all wore soaking wet clothes to go out and buy new clothes. My husband needed a suit to wear to speak at the conference at noon that day.

The Good News
On our shopping trip to buy clothes we happened upon a Gluten Free Store!!!!

Taplalek Allergia (ALLERGIACENTRUM)
H1134 Uaci Ut 9-15
In the Lehel Piac Hall Shopping Center
Located on the north side of the building on the top floor.
They had dairy free, gluten free and egg free products including fresh breads and pretzels. They also had lots of products for sample. This was gold mine!

Where we ate:
Hummus Bar
Kertesz u. 39
Across from Franz Linzt Music
Metro: oktagon on M1
Great salad bar and hummus.
We took the Tram #72 to the Zoo from here.

Lite Coffee
Andrassy ut 2
Multiple locations. Salad and coffee bar. Fresh salads mixed to order. They had lots of beans, tofu and cheeses to choose from along with a wide variety of vegetables including artichoke, olives and corn.

Govinda
Vigyazo Fernc utca
Near Roosevelt Park and Four Seasons Hotel
Vegetarian/Indian
They spoke English and were familiar with celiac and gluten free. We had a great veg GF meal!

Napfenyes izek (Sunny Tastes)
VIII ROzsa Utca 39
Awesome vegetarian food, staff was very knowledgeable about celiac. We ate here three times. They made us falafel with buckwheat flour instead of wheat.



Bread
We found Schar bread at Tesco and Kaiser supermarkets.

A Vegetarian Apartment and Guide Service
http://www.budaveg.com/
We did not stay here because they were booked. Next time!

List of Healthfood Stores on HappyCow

http://www.happycow.net/europe/hungary/budapest/

Gallert Bath: Re-enacting scene from the book Hanna's Cold Winter

Sights we saw:
Budapest Zoo
FunFair Park (Vidampark)
Szecchnyi Bath
Szechyi Bridge (Famous lions)
Buda Castle
Gallert Bath

In case you are wondering, our luggage arrived on our last day. We managed to have a great time and find great vegetarian and gluten free foods and stay healthy and 100% incident free!

Jamaica

This time I was teaching at a resort for 8 days and KT and my husband were the ones vacationing. We stayed at the FDR Runaway Bay. This was a great trip, the best part was the vacation nanny. Every family gets one at this all inclusive resort. Nanny arrives at breakfast and stays and plays with the kids all day long, she also cleans your room! Our nanny was so amazing! She decided to go gluten free for the week so that she did not accidentally expose KT.

I met with the chef when we arrived and he assured me that we would be well taken care of. this is an all inclusive resort and many of the meals are buffet style. The chef would come out at each meal and tell us what was safe to eat. At the sit down dinners he would prepare a meal specially for us. The food was always wonderful.

Do beware that the traditional jerk seasonings do have soy sauce in them so cross-contact on the grill is a potential issue. While we were there we discovered casava breads which are a traditional bread of the area made from the casava root (manioc aka tapioca). It was awesome. They made a "French Toast" out of it for us.

KT on kid's dress up night dressed as a waitress bringing us GF food!

We had lots of bean dishes, lots of curry, rice, fresh vegetables and fruit.

What we love about Jamaica is that you can drink the water and eat the produce.