Addressing gluten sensitivity, or any food sensitivity, is about total dietary awareness. You must scrutinize every last thing you put in your mouth. You must know how food is made. That means conscious, constant learning. It means having many conversations with servers and food preparers, 'til you have a real answer. If you're in a restaurant and your server says, "There's wheat in pasta?" try not to laugh; just ask for the chef or the manager.
Living this way as a child stoked my interest in food preparation. Grandma Mary was a deep influence: As the family chef, she was part artist and part scientist. She had the right tool for everything. She would practice new recipes the day before she had to make them for a family gathering. Between this and the constant investigation into the contents and preparation of foods, by the time I was about 20, I had worked in numerous restaurants as a server, food prep, and cook.
When I was accepted at the Culinary Institute of America, my admissions essay was called "Recipe for a Chef," which noted that my celiac had been one source of my passion for food preparation. I chose a journalism career instead, though I never lost interest in the kitchen. When I was 22, I lived in a spiritual community for a year. Someone named Patrick Sullivan ran the kitchen. He had been a saucier at Windows on the World and executive chef at the Columbia University Faculty Club. He knew his onions.
Naturally, I shadowed him in the kitchen every minute I could, volunteering as his prep or sous chef or dishwasher or whatever he needed. I was determined to learn everything I could possibly learn from him. One thing I discovered was that you can make just about anything vegan. At that stage of his career, he was obsessed with making sumptuous vegan meals that you just could not tell did not include any meat. All it took was the will, some research and planning, and some experimentation.
So, to all you restaurateurs out there, you have no excuse. Anyone actually trained in culinary arts knows that, outside of pastries, nearly all use of flour for appetizers and main courses is unnecessary—most, as in 90 percent. If you want to help gluten-free people and also run a better kitchen, get the flour out of where it does not belong. If you cannot make a reduction (gravy or sauce) without thickening it with flour, stick to cooking for your family on Thanksgiving, or get more training.
To the places that make a real effort, thank you. I walked into Cheese Louise for the first time last weekend; it's an actual old-school delicatessen located on Route 28. They had salmon chowder on the menu. I asked if it was thickened with flour, and the chef said, and I quote: "It's not necessary. The soup has potatoes." She had me at it's not necessary.
I finally found a local place that makes gluten-free pizza the right way—they get their dough and bread products from off-premises: Enzo's in the town of Ulster, which buys its dough from Meredith's Bakery. Recently, I called my old landlord, Renato, who owns DiBella's Pizza in Kingston, and he went on and on for 10 minutes about all the new gluten-free stuff he has on his menu. Dominick's Cafe has gluten-free options every day. Anatolia in New Paltz will gladly help gluten-free people. Please tell these places I said hello.
This attitude is more than we can hope for, however. So, for the rest of this article, I'll share my strategies for keeping gluten out of my body.
First of all, you need a little chutzpah. Just a little—enough to ask a series of questions and get real answers. You need to know in your heart and soul that the purpose of a restaurant is to serve you. Write that on your debit card. This comes with a tremendous responsibility on the part of the owners. Your job is to get the conversation onto the level of what they're secretly planning to put into your body.
Some places have a good attitude toward gluten-sensitive people. Please patronize those places and send your friends. Spread the news on Yelp and elsewhere. Other places have a genuinely dismal attitude, as if they've declared ideological war and would sooner keep a dead rat in their freezer than a loaf of gluten-free bread. I suggest boycotting those places, telling your friends to do the same, and, once again, making sure that you reflect this in any review you write.