Gluten Free Fish and Chips
Last Saturday my brother took us out for dinner. We went to The Thorn Tree Inn (George’s) pub and restaurant in Codnor, Derbyshire. Mark and his wife had eaten there on a number of occasions and really enjoyed the food. A high percentage of the dishes on the menu are fish so they figured a large number of them would likely be gluten free. I called the restaurant in advance to ask whether they did any gluten free options and was told they normally have at least a couple. We decided to head out there and give it a try..
The restaurant’s menu doesn’t use gluten free labelling which is a bit of a turn off but when I asked our server, she said that almost anything could be prepared gluten free and to let her know what I want and she would check with the chef. I much prefer places that label specific options as gluten free but I decided to give this place a try since many of the dishes on the menu were fishy and therefore would be naturally gluten free for the most part.
I ordered haddock and chips which came with mushy peas and tartar sauce. The scampi is normally fried but they grilled mine to make it gluten free. The chips were gluten free, the tartar sauce and mushy peas were not. I was happy that the chef and our waitress appeared to know what they were doing until my haddock and chips arrived with a wee serving of mushy peas! Glutenous mushy peas!! Luckily they were in a small dish by themselves so I was able to hand the dish back to our waitress but it did leave me wondering whether they had taken the necessary care with the rest of my meal.
They brought me a serving of ordinary peas instead and I asked for a few slices of lemon to flavour my fish and chips since I couldn’t be sure that any sauces they had were safe. I hadn’t eaten fish and chips in a long time so I really enjoyed my meal. It went down well with my large glass of vino blanco!
