Gluten Free in San Francisco

Well it is almost Christmas & the time of year to be with family & friends. My husbands brother is getting married so we decided to come home to Australia for a 5 week holiday.
Our Gluten Free stories begin at Vancouver Airport….

After missing our flight to San Francisco we had a couple of hours to spare at the airport & decided to go for lunch. There was not too much to choose from so we settled on the little cafeteria near our departure gate. Another friend was also flying out that afternoon and he came & joined us for a drink. Now as we had been in a hurry to get to our flight I was carrying absolutely no gluten free food (against even my own advice) so I stood there at the counter scanning the menu at the limited options. The breakfast meals were looking good but they had stopped serving at 10am (if only the all day breakfast could be standard) and a salad was no going to cure my hunger so I decided fries was the solution. I advised the cashier that I was allergic to gluten (i.e wheat, barley & rye) and would it be alright if I read the ingredients label from the fries box. She was a little unsure at the request but even still went & got me the box from which the fries came. Now in Canada for some reason they feel it necessary to coat their fries in flour, so it is generally a hit & miss exercise trying to have them. To my surprise when I read the label they were actually coated in Rice Flour!!!! This totally improved my mood from missing our flight & I immediately ordered a great big tray of fries, a peach cider & some beers for my husband & friends.

Once arriving in San Francisco caught the shuttle ride into the city were I got chatting to another passenger about what to do & see over our couple of days. San Francisco was her home town & she gave us the in’s & out’s of what to do & where to go. One thing that stood out was her comment that San Francisco was ‘eaters city’ and that there were endless fabulous restaurants to be enjoyed. She was not wrong!

Our first experience was at a local indian restaurant about 2 blocks from Union Square called “Chutneys”. It is a ‘cheap & cheerful’ kind of place with incredible food. I checked with the server before ordering my meal that there was no Gluten in the dishes & I was assured all was fine. I could not help but order the Butter Chicken & my husband ordered a Curried Vegetable & Lamb dish. Both dishes were Gluten Free & really tasty. I would even say some of the best indian food we have ever had.

We strolled back to our hotel (Hotel Diva) and were very impressed with our first culinary experience in San Francisco.