Gluten Free Boston

I spent a few days in the pretty city of Boston this summer. We didn’t do much eating out in the city but I did still find a few restaurants with gluten free options. I also spent quite a bit of time exploring local supermarkets for interesting gluten free foods with which we could prepare meals at our friend’s apartment both for our time in the city and for the extremely long train ride that we would be taking to Iowa.

The first night in town our friend whom we were staying with took us out to his favourite sushi restaurant in the city, Zen Sushi. I checked with the staff that their sushi was completely gluten free and they assured me that it was. We ordered lots of nigiri and maki all of which was fresh. When the sushi came it looked amazing and whilst I was almost certain the answer would be no, I asked our waitress whether they had any gluten free soy sauce. Much to my delight and surprise they did have and she brought me the bottle to check and use myself. I told the waitress how pleased I was that they provided this special soy sauce and she said that they have a few regular customers who have gluten and wheat allergies. The sushi was delicious and the vino tasty. With the addition of the gluten free soy sauce for mixing with wasabi, my dinner at  Zen Sushi was altogether awesome!

Perfect Nigiri and Maki

GF soy sauce

Whole Foods Market is a great place to find gluten free foods in Boston. This organic supermarket, which has branches throughout the country, sells lots of different things and various gluten free products throughout the market as labelled so, making it easy for coeliacs to find safe foods. They sell gluten free cereal, cakes, biscuits, bread and hundreds of other products.

The store I visited in Boston, as well as groceries, has a deli section where you can make your own salads or buy hot or cold prepared meals. Each food has a nutritional information label detailing what’s in the food and whether there are any allergens. This is extremely helpful from those of us on a gluten free diet but as always with these types of things, the possibility of contamination puts me off. The store also has a sushi bar. Different rolls have been prepared and the labelling provides information on what’s in each box. Reading the ingredients of the simple maki and nigiri boxes, most of them sounded gluten free but to ensure no cross contamination issues I asked the sushi chef if he would clean the preparation area and make me a fresh batch. He made me a tuna and cucumber roll and it was delicious.

Whole Foods, Boston

Freshly prepared sushi

On our second night in town, we decided to buy some things to make a gluten free dinner at our friend’s place. We got ground beef, black beans, salad and sweet potatoes to

Beef burgers and sweet potato wedges

Gluten free food for the train

make hamburgers and sweet potato wedges with salad, black beans and a couple of bottle of vino….very tasty! We also bought a few simple ingredients to allow us to prepare a gluten free dinner to take with us on our long Amtrak ride from Boston to Iowa. We made rice with black beans and salad…simple and tastes great either hot or cold!

Gluten Free Restaurants:

I came across a few restaurants with gluten free menus or options that I would have liked to try if I’d had more time/funds.

Sweet gluten free treats

Modern Pastry Shop (on 257 Hanover Street) sell gluten free muffins and whoopie pies, which looked like some sort of oreo cookie dessert.

Nebo

Nebo (on 90 N Washington Street), is an Italian restaurant, which has a full separate gluten free menu with a huge variety of interesting antipasti, pizza and pasta options including a sweet pizza topped with chocolate, nutella and chopped hazelnuts…sounds very sweet!

Marco

Marco, (on 253 Hanover Street) also does gluten free options. There was no special menu to look at but customers should speak to their server or call in advance to speak with the manager if interested in finding out more.