Swine – New York City

by byebyebarley Posted on March 18, 2013

I recently tried out Swine, a gluten friendly restaurant on 531 Hudson Street in the West Village.  On Swine’s website it says, “We combine food and drink selections at wide price points, amazing music, sexy ambiance, “rock and roll” vibe, but along with warm service to create a sense of “place” in order to reach our goal of being the fine food and beverage loving New Yorker’s spot of choice.“  I found that to be a very accurate description.

There was a bit of a wait for dinner, so we headed to the bar to a drink.  Swine has an excellent drink menu, with several naturally gluten free rums, tequilas, and even two potato vodkas, Tito’s and Liv.  A couple of the specialty cocktails, The Aristocrat and Hot Love, both appeared to be gluten free, but the bar was pretty loud and I thought it would be tough to ask, so I settled for a Tito’s and Tonic.  I plan on ordering Hot Love next time though!

Our table opened up and we headed downstairs to the restaurant for dinner.  Swine is set up with a bar upstairs and a small dining area downstairs.  I really liked the atmosphere at Swine; I think they hit the sexy ambiance they were shooting for.

We told our waiter that we were dining gluten free and he immediately produced gluten free bread, which he informed us was baked fresh, right in Carroll Gardens, by Karen Freer of Free Bread.  Okay, okay, due to the Tito’s I don’t really remember what exactly he told us, so I just copied that off of their website. :)   I always think gluten free bread is a nice touch so I don’t have to sit there just watching others eat their bread, but honestly, gluten free bread usually sucks.  This gluten free bread was awesome, however!  It was by far the best gluten free bread I have every had!!!  They can substitute the same bread for anything on the menu served on or with bread.

We started off with 5 selections on “the boards”.  Fittingly, that is a board with little appetizers on it.  Everything we ordered was excellent, but my personal favorite was the Grafton Cheddar Cheese with Bacon Marmalade.  Bacon Marmalade!  Awesome.  The Tongue Pastrami was also very good, my second favorite of the five.

Next, we split the Pan Roasted Ocean Trout and the Bone Marrow & Brisket Burger.  The Ocean Trout was good, and we had to order it since we had just had a long conversation about pan roasting (I’m trying to learn how to cook).  The Bone Marrow & Brisket Burger was awesome!

For dessert we split the Gluten-Free Cookie Plate: orange cranberry pecan, dark chocolate toffee, and salted milk chocolate caramel.  Amazing – so many great flavors!

Overall, I loved Swine and I’m looking forward to returning.  I give it my highest recommendation.

Twitt
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Five Napkin Burger – New York City

by byebyebarley Posted on March 14, 2013

I’ve been to Five Napkin Burger twice, once many months ago, and again a couple of weeks ago.  I believe my first visit was to the Hell’s Kitchen location at 630 9th Ave and my second to the Upper West Side restaurant at 2315 Broadway.  My dining companion is in charge of NYC navigation (among other things) so I may be off on which locations we’ve visited.

Assuming I’m correct, the one on Hell’s Kitchen had a gluten free menu, while the Upper West Side version did not.  Despite not having a gluten free menu, the bartender said they could make any (I think ) of the burgers gluten free.  I can’t remember which burger I had the first time, but I had a bacon cheeseburger the second time, which was very good.

To me, the best thing about 5 Napkin Burger is the beverages.  I miss being able to have a burger and a beer in a restaurant.  5 Napkin Burger had New Grist gluten free beer on the menu.  I also love cider, which 5 Napkin has several of on the menu.  I opted for cider on each of my visits.  Finally, several of their signature cocktails are made with Titos Vodka, a naturally gluten free corn vodka!

Twitt
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Heartland Brewery – New York City

by byebyebarley Posted on March 12, 2013

I tried out Heartland Cafe, at 625 8th Avenue (at 41st St in Midtown), in New York City a couple of weeks ago.  I was actually planning to go to Market Cafe, on 9th Avenue, but I arrived around 4 PM on a Sunday afternoon to find them closing.  They informed me they were only open for brunch on Sunday.  I like brunch and going to the website to add the link for this review, I see that they have “unlimited Mimosas, Bellinis, Bloody Marys, Skrewdrivers, or Margaritas” by adding $12 to any entree (I think this is just with brunch).  I’m confident my dining companion and I can more than get our money’s worth out of that deal:), so I think I’ll be taking a Monday off from work soon!

In this case, I was starving, dining alone, and had stupidly worn very uncomfortable shoes to NYC (my feet were actually bleeding when I got home!).  So, I fired up my gluten free app, hoping for something close.  Heartland Cafe was my closest good option, and although I wasn’t that excited about it, I limped on over.  I’m glad I did!

Since I was alone, I got seated at a little table near the bar.  Perfect.  I asked for a gluten free menu and the waiter informed me that the gluten free options were marked on the regular menu.  Surveying the menu, I spotted Hickory Smoked BBQ St. Louis Ribs as a gluten free option.  I realized that dining alone was the perfect opportunity to eat super messy food, so I quickly ordered them.  The waiter mentioned that they came with fries, so I asked him if they had a separate frier.  He told me they prepared all of the gluten free food in a completely separate kitchen!  Awesome!  I ordered a full rack!

I’ve actually very rarely eaten ribs, because I’m pretty self conscious about eating them in public and I don’t know how to make them (note to blog stalker: we should make ribs!)  So, I’m not an expert or anything.  I thought they were awesome.  The perfect meal to eat when starving!  The fries were decent too, particularly because I felt I could eat them with some confidence (but I popped a glutenease for good measure).  The food at Heartland Cafe definitely exceeded my expectations.

I had read some reviews of Heartland mentioning that they brewed their own gluten fee beer.  I’m a little bit ashamed to admit that ByeByeBarley forgot to ask them about this, but he had a long drive home.  I’ll ask next time and report back!

While Heartland Cafe had several locations, it appears the Midtown West location is the only one with a gluten free menu. :(

Twitt
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Jaleo, Oyamel, and Zaytinya – Washington D.C.

by byebyebarley Posted on February 28, 2013

On our recent trip to Washington D.C., we were able to try out three fantastic Jose Andres owned restaurants: Jaleo, Oyamel, and Zaytinya.  All have a similar small plate dining philosophy, extensive gluten free menus, and delicious food.

Our first stop was Jaleo, a Spanish tapas restaurant, located at 480 7th St, NW.  Everything we had was great with the highlight being the Ferran Adria Liquid Olives.  Honestly, I wouldn’t have even known to order that, but fortunately for me, my dining companion is very smart!  Service was just okay as there seemed to be food critic there garnering most of our waiter’s attentions.  ByeByeBarley.com apparently gets very little respect! :)

The next night we hit Oyamel for Mexican at 401 7th St, NW.  The food was excellent, although I felt I might have liked the food at Jaleo slightly better.  That may simply have been a matter of how hungry I was or what we ordered, however.  The food was still great.  I liked the atmosphere and service at Oyamel a little better than Jaleo, so I would rate my overall experience at the two about equal.

Our final destination was Zaytinya at 701 9th St, NW for a Turkish, Greek, and Lebanese lunch.  Of the three, this was the restaurant we there the least excited about, but it actually turned out to be my favorite of the three!  Great food, atmosphere, and service!  The only small issue was that waitress forgot to bring our olive order and brought them out when we mentioned this after we had finished all the other courses.  That was a little disappointing since they would have been good to munch on throughout but were way too strong to just eat at the end.

Overall, these are three amazing restaurants that I very highly recommend!

Obligatory pics below.  Unfortunately, I think I forgot to photograph a few dishes, notably the Liquid Olive. :(

Note: I’ve been informed by my dining companion that this review does not do the restaurants justice, so I will have to rewrite it.  Stay tuned for an update!!!

Jaleo

Oyamel

Zaytinya

 

Twitt
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Fuel Pizza – Washington D.C.

by byebyebarley Posted on February 26, 2013

I’ve been slacking horribly in updating my blog, but I was in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago and tried out a few different restaurants that were gluten free.  The first is Fuel Pizza.  The have several locations in North Carolina and Washington D.C; we ate at the one at 1606 K Street NW in D.C.

Fuel serves other things like wings, sandwiches, and calzones, but I don’t believe any of those are gluten free.  The serve both slices and pies of normal pizza, but only full pies of the gluten free version.  I believe they had a fairly small size available, so this isn’t a real problem unless you are in a huge rush and don’t want to wait for it.  There is a list of 35 “pie parts” to add to your pizza with the vast majority being gluten free.

It has been a few weeks and I didn’t take any pictures of our pizza, so I can’t remember what toppings we had on it.  While I may have been biased a bit by being absolutely starving at the time, I really liked it.  It was wasn’t fancy, just good solid pizza.  Compared to other pizzas that I’ve tried, it had very thin crust.  I have always generally liked thin crust pizzas, but I think it is a particularly good idea for gluten free pizza crust since, unfortunately, the crust usually isn’t the highlight of gluten free pizza.  Overall, Fuel Pizza is definitely worth trying if you’re in the area.

Most importantly, Fuel Pizza also serves gluten free Red Bridge beer.  Can’t go wrong with gluten free Pizza and Beer!!!

More D.C. reviews on the way!

Twitt
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Nizza – New York City

by byebyebarley Posted on January 28, 2013

I recently ate a Nizza Restaurant at 630 9th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen.  I wasn’t really aware of Nizza beforehand, but while we were searching for a place to eat I noticed it had a bunch of great review on Find Me Gluten Free.  We decided to give it a shot, which turned out to be a great decision.  It’s my new favorite Manhattan gluten free restaurant!

Nizza has an extensive gluten free menu.  Along with many appetizers and entrees, Nizza has gluten free bread, desserts,  beer (Estralla Daura), pasta (La Veneziane corn pasta), and pizza.  Well technically, they don’t exactly have gluten free pizza, but they have Socca, a crispy chickpea pancake, on the menu with exactly the same toppings as some of their pizzas.  I will definitely be trying that in the future.

Our meal started with gluten free bread.  While I’ve never been a big bread eater anyway, it is nice not to be excluded from that part of the meal.  It looked far different than the other bread (picture below), but I generally liked it.  My dining companion, who had the non-gluten free bread tried it and described it as “savory”, which I thought was an excellent description.

I had the Tuna “Nizza”, which is a Ligurian style marinated tuna with caperberries, castelvetrano olives, roasted potatoes & haricots verts.  My dining companion ordered the Porcetta, also prepared gluten free for sharing purposes.  Both of these were fantastic and among the best gluten free meals I’ve had!

Overall, I would rank Nizza as the number one gluten free restaurant I’ve been to in New York.  They have great food, excellent service, and a wide selection of gluten free options.

Twitt
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Nom Wah Tea Parlor – New York City – Chinatown

by byebyebarley Posted on January 15, 2013

I was in Chinatown last week, hungrily, pitifully peering into the windows of dozens of Chinese restaurants that I sadly realized were going to be almost impossible to safely get a gluten free meal from.  I had tried to eat at a couple of Chinese restaurants early in my gluten free days and had been very sick after both attempts.  My (at that time) discomfort with asking for special treatment combined with a language barrier had proven disastrous in those cases

Luckily my companion recalled Nom Wah Tea Parlor being on a list of gluten free restaurants that I had recently sent her.  We thought it sounded like one of the riskier gluten free options we’ve tried, but I decided to brave it.  It is located at 13 Doyers Street.  I was totally lost by this point, so all I know is that that’s in Chinatown.

Nom Wah has a pretty extensive list of gluten free items, which are marked by a special symbol on the regular menu.  As we discovered, these can be made either gluten free or not, so it is extremely important to be very explicit that you want them gluten free.

We ordered several gluten free selections from the menu (she’s not gluten free, but we wanted to share) and some tea (Because it’s a TEA PARLOR!!!).  Since there was a bit of a language barrier, we tried to be as clear as possible that I needed my food to be gluten free.  I was not all that comfortable, but when she returned with a bottle of San J Tamari, clearly marked as gluten free, I felt much better.

A different employee soon arrived with several of the dishes we had ordered.  Pretty much all covered in soy sauce.  That seemed suspicious, so we called him back over and asked if they were gluten free.  He immediately motioned me back away from the soy sauce (as if it might jump right out of the dish and assault me!) and quickly snatched the dishes away.  Oddly, this made me feel somewhat better, as despite the miscommunication, he seemed to grasp the implications of eating gluten for me.

A bit later he returned with new gluten free dishes.  While still not totally comfortable, I proceeded to gorge myself on Chinese food on the theory that, even if I did gluten myself, I might as well get my money’s worth.  I felt pretty comfortable that they now knew it was supposed to be gluten free, but I was still concerned about cross contamination, particularly because some of it was fried and I didn’t ask if that was done separately from the gluten containing stuff.

Luckily, I felt fine afterward.  And the food was excellent.  That’s awesome because I will need to return to Chinatown for more of the awesome foot rubs I got before dinner.

I’m not super sensitive, so it you are, I would recommend asking more about cross contamination.  If not, I believe this is the best choice for a gluten free meal in Chinatown.

Twitt
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Bloom’s Deli – New York City

by byebyebarley Posted on January 11, 2013

I was in Manhattan for a couple of days last week and ate a Bloom’s New York Delicatessen & Restaurant a couple of times last week, once for lunch and once for breakfast. Bloom’s is located at 350 Lexington Avenue on the corner of 40th Street. It’s a very casual place and felt to me like an old school New York City Deli should; it is the kind of place I always want to eat at while I’m in New York, but usually can’t.

Bloom’s has a substantial gluten free menu, with many options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The staff seemed very gluten aware and during one of my visits, the waitress already had the gluten free menu in her hand from another table. Bloom’s also does takeout if you’re looking to order gluten free.

For lunch I had a corned beef sandwich. It was piled high with delicious corned beef on what appeared to be Udi’s bread. Given the size of Udi’s bread, $12.95 sounds like a lot for a sandwich, but given the quality and amount of the corned beef, it was well worth it. It came with a couple of pickles and some coleslaw as well. Highly recommended.

I was so impressed by my corned beef sandwich that I went back for breakfast the next day. They had a sign outside advertising their gluten free pancakes and french toast, but I could not resist ordering the “Big Man Omelette”, which contained Pastrami, Corned Beef, and Kosher Salami. It was okay, but not quite up to the standard set by the corned beef sandwich. I’ll try the gluten free pancakes next time I’m there for breakfast.

Overall, Bloom’s is a great place to stop by (or order in) for a quick, casual gluten free meal in Manhattan.

Twitt
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Palace Cafe – New Orleans

by byebyebarley Posted on December 29, 2012

I ate at Palace Cafe a three times on my recent NOLA trip.  It is an upscale Dickie Brennan restaurant at 605 Canal Street in the French Quarter.  They have a separate gluten free menu with a pretty extensive selection of gluten free options.  On each of my visits to Palace Cafe, the staff made me feel very comfortable about their gluten awareness.

During several trips to Palace Cafe I had the Cobb Salad, Crab Claws Bordelaise, Ribeye and Shrimp, Grilled Gulf Fish (I can’t remember what the fish was that day), and some shrimp appetizer that many not be on the online gluten free menu since none look familiar.  While everything was good, I enjoyed the Grilled Gulf Fish the most, probably followed by the Crab Claws Bordelaise.  While they don’t have a gluten free desert menu listed online, they were able to point out a few desserts that were gluten free, one of which was the Bananas Foster.  It was excellent!

Below are a couple of pictures of my last lunch at Palace Cafe.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of my dinners and dessert, so despite eating there several times, the pics are pretty limited.  Trust me, everything looked great!

Twitt
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