The Lake Effect Diner has often been a fallback place for dinner for us. Everyone in the family can find something they want on the menu and like a true diner, you can get breakfast round the clock. Recently we had our first dinner there since going gluten-free.

The Lake Effect uses local, hormone-free beef, eggs, and chicken and its owner, Tucker Carlson, is tuned into the local food movement. This is a forward-thinking place. The fried chicken on the menu is listed as being gluten-free, so we thought there would be understanding about GF dining.  I imagine Carlson completely understands gluten-free dining, but the staff certainly doesn’t. We asked if they had a gluten-free menu. No, they don’t, but the waitress could ask in the kitchen about what on the menu was gluten-free. She came back to tell us they don’t have a gluten-free menu or make anything gluten-free (what about that chicken?) and “so like, you could order anything that doesn’t have gluten.” It was probably the most unhelpful response we’ve had yet when dining out.  There are things on the menu that are likely safe (eggs, salads, veggies) but the staff’s inability to have any kind of conversation about gluten ingredients made me very leery. Bottom line: At this point, I would say this is a place to avoid.

What did I eat? I had a cheeseburger with no bun, cole slaw, and fries. They make onion rings here, so I know the frying oil was contaminated (which does not bother me, so I was ok). It’s a pretty safe bet that the burger was grilled on the same griddle as gluten-containing items. I didn’t even bother with photos. I’m really disappointed in the response here.

The Lake Effect Diner has often been a fallback place for dinner for us. Everyone in the family can find something they want on the menu and like a true diner, you can get breakfast round the clock. Recently we had our first dinner there since going gluten-free. The Lake Effect uses local, hormone-free beef, … Read more →

We were pleasantly surprised by how gluten-free friendly Five Guys (8248 Transit Rd, Amherst) is.  The place is a favorite with our teenage son, so we’ve been a few times. If you or anyone in your family has a peanut allergy, steer clear. There are big boxes of peanuts where people scoop their own. You shell them at your table while waiting for your food and there are shells and peanut dust everywhere.

You can order your burger or dog without a bun and they keep it separate from any gluten items. You can get your item in a metal bowl or in a lettuce wrap. I like to get the lettuce wrap, but then eat it with a knife and fork. Five Guys has great toppings: mushrooms, onions, steak sauce, jalapeno, BBQ sauce, tomato, pickles and more.  The burgers are huge and very juicy. A “regular” burger is two patties. A “little” burger is one. One is

more than enough for me! The toppings (all GF) make the burgers fantastic and there is no charge for them, so load ’em up.

Their fries are fried in peanut oil and are GF. Nothing else is fried in the oil so there is no cross-contamination. The fries are thick and hand cut. I would like them to be crunchier, but they’re still good.

My teen son loves the beverage choices here – soda with all sorts of add-in flavors, so you can get Coke with orange or vanilla flavor added to it, for example.

And if you can’t face the thought of a burger and fries without a milkshake, the Transit Road location has a Red Mango next door where you can order a smoothie.

An added bonus – you can place your order online and just pick it up and take it home (this is convenient when you have a starving teen at home).

 

We were pleasantly surprised by how gluten-free friendly Five Guys (8248 Transit Rd, Amherst) is.  The place is a favorite with our teenage son, so we’ve been a few times. If you or anyone in your family has a peanut allergy, steer clear. There are big boxes of peanuts where people scoop their own. You shell … Read more →

Before we became gluten-free, Torches was one of our favorite places. The owners have recently opened Smoke on the Water in Tonawanda, on the creek near the Canal. This spot is a bit hard to spot since it’s tucked away on the corner of Young and Broad. There is very little parking in their lot, but plenty across the street behind Walgreens.

The restaurant is pretty small inside with a bar and some tables and it has a bar ambience, but the back deck is wonderful. There are plenty of tables with a view of the Creek. We enjoyed our visit here very much. Our server was friendly

and helpful and she was happy to inquire in the kitchen about what was gluten free (I’m still hoping for a server somewhere who will know this without having to check, but I can’t complain since she was very thorough!).

The four of us decided to order The American Dream. This allowed us to get 4 BBQ entrees , 4 salads, and 3 sides for $75, less than it would cost to order just the entrees and sides separately, so with the salads, it was a nice bargain. There are only two salads on the menu, so we got two of each – Caprese salad was very nice with fresh basil and smoked mozzarella dressing up the tomatoes, olive oil and balsamic glaze. The Smokehouse salad was a wedge of

iceberg with bacon, potato chips, tomato and bleu cheese dressing. Everything was gluten-free and all were nicely done.

For our entrees we ordered turkey, chicken, ribs, and pulled pork. They arrived on a big wooden platter. They cook everything in a big smoker in the parking lot, so this is the real deal. The BBQ sauce is gluten free. Everything was tasty. The turkey was something you don’t normally find at a BBQ joint and it had just enough smoke. The ribs were tender. The chicken was perfect and the pulled pork was tangy and moist.

For our sides, our kids got cornbread (NOT gluten-free so I didn’t sample). We chose sweet potato fries as our second side. These are waffle cut and come with

honey butter. They were fantastic – crisp and sweet. They are not fried in oil with anything else, so they are safe. We also ordered the Chiavetta’s potatoes – baby potatoes that have been boiled, soaked in Chiavetta’s dressing (by the way, I’ve confirmed with Chiavetta’s that their BBQ sauce and Italian dressing are gluten-free) and grilled. I wasn’t a fan of these. They needed to be grilled much more than they were – there were faint grill marks on one side of only some potatoes. There was nothing crisp or crunchy happening there. The dressing was very sour and tasted like straight vinegar.  I wasn’t a fan.

The menu has several sandwiches, but some would be good without the bread – the bologna sounded pretty good to us! Other eye-catching items included the baked beans that have collard

greens in them, French fries with voodoo powder, blackened grouper, whisky smoked shrimp with aoili, and a smoked pork stuffed potato. They have a specials menu, so be sure to check that out – prime rib was on it the night we visited with a creative preparation. Desserts appeared to be all gluten so we didn’t partake, but this is nice and close to Mississippi Mud’s at Niawanda Park, so ice cream is just down the street!

 

Before we became gluten-free, Torches was one of our favorite places. The owners have recently opened Smoke on the Water in Tonawanda, on the creek near the Canal. This spot is a bit hard to spot since it’s tucked away on the corner of Young and Broad. There is very little parking in their lot, … Read more →

Here’s a recent piece about gluten-free dining in Toronto, if you’re headed north.

Here’s a recent piece about gluten-free dining in Toronto, if you’re headed north.

A recent afternoon found me in the Southtowns and in need of lunch. My daughter whipped out her phone and using UrbanSpoon, decided we needed to go to David’s Grille in Orchard Park.  Lunch is a tough meal in restaurants for those of us who don’t eat gluten. You’re almost always stuck with a salad, unless you get a sandwich without the bun (which is not a lot of fun, excuse the rhyme).

David’s lunch menu had a nice assortment of salads – 7 of them. As soon as our waitress came over, I asked if they have gluten-free salad dressing. The white balsamic and raspberry vinaigrette are GF she told me. Several of the salads have gluten in the form of croutons, tortilla strips or pitas, but it’s possible to order them without. I got the David Eddy salad, which came with bacon, egg, cucumber, tomato, and cheese ( I had already dug in when I took this picture, so it’s not as pretty as it looked when it arrived). All salads can have chicken or shrimp added to them for $5 (chicken) or $7 (shrimp). Those items are gluten-free, but I didn’t get any. Since I was feeling deprived, I also ordered a side of fries. They have curly Q and regular fries. They cannot guarantee that the oil is not cross-contaminated, so if that’s a problem for you, don’t get the fries. Whatever you do, don’t get the curly Q fries, which have a coating on them that contains gluten. The regular fries do not, so I had those. My salad was excellent. Everything was fresh and it was a nice size. The fries were crisp and very good.

If you want to do a sandwich without bun, there are lots of options. My daughter ordered the David’s Grille Melt (on the bun, which had Buffalo chicken, caramelized onion, 2 cheeses and a dipping sauce) and enjoyed it. It would have been tasty even without the bun.

Our lunch came to a very reasonable $23.

The restaurant was almost completely empty during our visit, so it was quiet and service was very fast and attentive. The restaurant is attractive with a large hip-looking bar area. Parking is on the street or in a lot behind the building. I would come back here for lunch and sample a different salad if I find myself in the neighborhood again. The dinner menu didn’t present a lot of options for GF, unless you get steak or pork tenderloin, so I probably wouldn’t come for dinner.

A recent afternoon found me in the Southtowns and in need of lunch. My daughter whipped out her phone and using UrbanSpoon, decided we needed to go to David’s Grille in Orchard Park.  Lunch is a tough meal in restaurants for those of us who don’t eat gluten. You’re almost always stuck with a salad, … Read more →

Savor is the fine dining restaurant at the Niagara Falls Culinary Institute. It’s a restaurant school, which means all of the staff are students. We’ve been to several other restaurant schools (notably in Philadelphia and San Francisco) and I always love the atmosphere – people who are passionate about food, trying to learn as much as

they can, and do as good a job as possible. There are often mistakes, but somehow everyone is very earnest which makes up for it.

We headed up to the Falls on a Saturday night after making a reservation and mentioning two people in our party were gluten-free. We were told it would not be a problem at all. We easily found free parking on the street, although there is a ramp in the building (this is in the old Rainbow

Mall building). The lobby is beautiful with a very modern fountain. There is a Barnes and Noble store that also sells culinary items. It was closed when we got there and appeared quite small. The restaurant was comfortable and attractive and you can see the kitchen from just about every table. All the staff was unfailingly polite and attentive during our meal.

After we were seated we asked our server what the gluten free choices were. She scurried back to talk to the chef. The information she returned with was not very complete. She basically said we could have the Caesar salad without croutons and that the fish dishes were gluten free. She did not address what other items on the menu could

be presented gluten-free by removing sauces or making adjustments (and since we called ahead with our needs we expected some effort to be made).  You can see the menu here – there is also a lunch menu (which is filled with gluten, other than the salads, unfortunately).  We were presented with a specials menu but it had only one item and one cocktail on it (an appletini which my of newly drinking age daughter enjoyed).

We began with an amuse-bouche of saffron risotto. It was a nice little bite. The server did not specifically tell us it was GF, which would have been nice.

The dinner menu has 3 salads – Caesar, farro, and arugula. Three of us got the Caesar. My son is not

GF and his came with one large crouton on top. The salads were a bit heavily dressed for my taste, but had a very nice tang. There were two anchovy fillets on top. Overall, they were quite good. My daughter who is not GF began with the beef carpaccio. This dish could easily be GF if ordered without the toast. It came with citrus segments which added a nice flavor. She felt the beef was not presented rare enough and was in fact slightly brown. It was thinly sliced and flavorful, however.

There is a nice selection of entrees, however all of the pizza (in their wonderful pizza oven) and pastas are off-limits for those who are GF. I wish they could offer a GF pizza from that oven!

My daughter and I both ordered the salmon which was served on a banana leaf and jasmine rice and accompanied with a coconut broth you could pour over it, macadamia nuts, and an interesting little yolk-like sac of pineapple juice you pierced and also poured over the dish. The salmon and rice were prepared perfectly. The coconut broth and pineapple juice could barely be tasted, so those flavors need to be much stronger for the dish to be successful. It was a bit bland, but when you could taste those flavors, it was a lovely combo. I loved the macadamia nuts!

My husband ordered the tournedos of beef. We were told the sauce (cognac demi-glace) was not GF but the dish could be offered “plain.” He asked if the chef could substitute something GF instead of the sauce (often a flavored butter is an easy switch a chef can manage). That didn’t happen however. The tournedos were crusted with pepper, which was done in a heavy-handed manner. Perhaps if it was balanced out with a sauce, it would have been good. He also did not care for the whipped potatoes which had a heavy dose of mustard in them.

Our non-GF son had the gnocchi which he enjoyed.

Dessert was a short menu with a bananas Foster and a gluten-free flourless chocolate cake. The menu specifically identified it as GF. Why can’t they do this on the dinner menu also? Everyone at the table got the cake which was mostly a mousse with a thin sheet of solid chocolate on top, a mint cream and some mint ice cream with chocolately crackles. It was delicious. There was just enough mint to balance the richness of the chocolate. It was a nice ending to a fairly nice meal.

Our bill came to $172 for 4 apps, 4 entrees, 3 desserts, and one cocktail.  Not a cheap night out and for that price I would have expected to love the food. But, it was fun and they did understand our dietary needs. If you like fish, give it a try!

 

 

 

Savor is the fine dining restaurant at the Niagara Falls Culinary Institute. It’s a restaurant school, which means all of the staff are students. We’ve been to several other restaurant schools (notably in Philadelphia and San Francisco) and I always love the atmosphere – people who are passionate about food, trying to learn as much … Read more →