After frequently being asked questions about how we select restaurants for Wheatless Wanderlust, how often we update guides, and more, we’ve compiled a selection of commonly asked questions to help explain how we run this site SPECIFICALLY regarding gluten free city guides.
Table of Contents
Do You Have Celiac Disease?
Matt has Celiac Disease, and Alysha accompanies him to make the gluten-free lifestyle easier for everyone.
However, it’s worthwhile repeating that YOU AND I DIFFER, and our particular needs and requirements for restaurants also differ.
It also bears restating that neither of us is a physician, and this site is not intended to replace medical advice.
This site is a collection of our own experiences meant to help provide you the information we’ve gathered through research and direct involvement so that you can use it to plan your own trip.
Can’t I Just Rely on One of the Gluten Free Apps?
Fundamentally speaking, the gluten free apps (we like Find Me Gluten Free the best of the bunch) are very, very useful for finding potential gluten free restaurants.
However, the truth is that those apps essentially rely on random strangers online to evaluate restaurants for you.
Regretfully, we’ve had some rather negative encounters with restaurants that are supposedly gluten free as per an app that ended up not being safe for Celiacs AT ALL.
A particular unnamed pizza restaurant comes to mind where we showed up and they basically said “LOL we’re not even a little safe for Celiacs” despite the 20+ 5 star reviews on the app.
We’re not saying “don’t utilize the apps whatsoever” because the reality is, practically all of our investigation starts on Find Me Gluten Free.
In our guides, we use the apps as a point to start from, but we delve deeper by thoroughly examining menus and reviews, directly contacting restaurants ourselves (either through email, phone calls, or Instagram DMs), and ensuring they meet our requirements.
One of my, Matt`s, favorite leisure activities is exploring every possible grocery store to examine the selection of gluten free products. For two reasons
There is a famous biscuit place in Seattle that, until fairly recently, gained very affirmative reviews on Find Me Gluten Free.
However, someone familiar with Seattle informed me that this establishment prepares both gluten and non-gluten biscuits using the same equipment for baking and handling, which is understandably unappealing for individuals watching gluten intake.
Only the restaurants that simultaneously meet our requirements and provide genuinely good cuisine make it into our guides.
What Are Your Celiac-Related Requirements?
Here’s a quick overview of our requirements.
- No shared fryers. This is often the first question I ask. If there’s any doubt, avoid fried foods.
- No combined bakeries. To me, the risk of cross-contamination is too high with combined equipment, utensils, etc.
- No gluten-containing oats. Oats can be problematic due to potential cross-contact, and many gluten-free bakeries now use gluten-free oats in many products. However, not all gluten-free oat products are safe for people with celiac disease. Here is Gluten Free Watchdog`s perspective on this issue.
- No gluten reduced beers. While labeled “gluten reduced”, current testing methods cannot confirm these are truly gluten-free (they likely are not). See Gluten Free Watchdog’s perspective.
- I tend to be wary of gluten free pizza offered in an environment where various foods are prepared collectively, but I will dine there if they have independent work surfaces, utensils, and ingredient containers (cross-contamination can occur when reaching into a tub of cheese or mushrooms with flour-dusted hands), and so on. Basically, a segregated section of the kitchen, and ideally a separate oven. I am willing to eat at an establishment that places my pizza in a shared oven on a dedicated gluten free pan, but the risk is higher.
How Do You Choose the Gluten Free Restaurants in Your Guides?
The amount of research that goes into our guides requires significant effort, when we carefully consider how much time is devoted.
At a high level, our aim in our gluten free city guides is NOT to provide you with a list of literally every single place you could find a safe gluten free meal. It’s to offer you a list of places that can serve you a gluten free meal that is both safe and tasty.
Also known as “places we, ourselves, actually want to dine.”
It begins with creating a list, which normally includes using gluten free travel applications (Find Me Gluten Free, primarily), searching “gluten free” and “Celiac” on Google Maps, and looking up “gluten free city name” on Google to compile a list.
Next comes slimming down the options. We’ll start by visiting social media and websites of each place to get a feel for what they’re offering currently. Another reliable source to see menus is Google Maps, but those can be unreliable since menus change fairly regularly.
Generally speaking, if a location doesn`t clearly display either a menu showing gluten free options OR some mention of gluten free options on their website or social media, we`ll opt to exclude them from consideration.
Then we’ll add them to our Google Maps Saved Places to visualize the locations, which is especially helpful for planning.
Only the places that both fulfill our standards AND were truly worthwhile make our guides. Occasionally, we’ll include a popular spot even if it wasn’t uniquely good (staring at you, Pizza in Trevi in Rome) and provide our unedited review (“you can do preferable”).
The other thing you should be aware of is that we generally only include places we’ve personally eaten at.
Experience has taught us over roughly five years of operating this site that you, dear reader, expect more substance than a simple two sentence overview!
You want details about the ambiance, whether the cuisine was good, and what highlights stood out. The small particulars are important! And for that reason, we generally only include eateries where we`ve personally dined.
Which brings us to our next question…
How Often Do You Update Your Guides?
This concept may provoke disagreement from some audiences. However, we believe strongly that an guide should only be updated under two conditions: if something changes at an establishment we have previously reported on (e.g. they introduce gluten into the kitchen) or if we personally revisit the city.
Therefore, generally we likely won’t have that exciting new gluten free bakery in Paris or that gluten free pop up event in any city here unless we’ve actually gone there ourselves.
Allow us to explain that philosophy.
Because we focus on relaying our own personal experiences to inform our guides, we generally WILL NOT add a new restaurant to a guide until revisiting the city.
Which, as one might imagine, means that we don’t have every single gluten free location in the world detailed in our guides.
There are pros and cons to this approach.
On one hand, following those guidelines allows us to be certain we’re providing quality recommendations, especially because the best way to ask questions and get the answers we need is in person, face to face with a server or manager.
On the other hand, it does definitely mean that we could be neglecting one or two potential places.
But we understand that you, like us, are likely exploring other resources as you plan your trip, so we hope you’ll be able to locate those missing locations in other references.
It’s also worth noting that every winter we go through our guides and make a list of updates we want to make to freshen them up a little bit.
Generally, those updates are either architectural, adding new data, or reworking the places we’ve incorporated.
Why Don’t You Charge for Your Guides?
We’ve alternated on this question through the years, but we always return to the original mission for Wheatless Wanderlust: to enable our fellow Celiacs to travel the world safely and confidently, and to eat ALLL the gluten free cuisine.
To be completely honest, we have genuinely spent thousands of dollars eating at the restaurants referenced in our guides.
But the other truth is that we probably would have done most of that anyway, because we love to eat, and the individual has been known to transport family and friends distances out of the way to go to that one specialty bakery that he read about.
So, we keep them free because we feel that’s the best way to provide our reader with the information needed to travel confidently and safely with Celiac Disease.
Ultimately, we want you to have an amazing trip, enjoy gluten free pastries/pizza/etc, and return home energized and ready to plan the next trip.
How Can We Support You?
We’ve had more than one person reach out and say something to the effect of “you clearly spent a lot of money making this guide, how can we support you so that you can keep doing it?”
The answer is to keep consulting our guides (you evidently saw we have promotions, which is one way we generate income here) and tell friends – whether they have dietary restrictions or not – about our guides when planning excursions.
More on Traveling with Celiac Disease
- Exploring without Gluten: Guidance for Traveling when Celiac Requires Care
- The Optimal Gluten Free Traveling Places for Celiac Food Admirers
- A Complete Guide to Gluten Free Dining When Eating Out
