Archive | July, 2012

Bell Street Farm

28 Jul

Today we spent the day in Los Alamos so that we could try Bell Street Farm. Not only did we get to visit this cool market/eatery, but we also lucked out because it was the Los Alamos Chair Faire! You may be asking yourself, what is a Chair Faire?  Well, it is exactly what it sounds like… a fair that showcases chairs. From the website,

Benefitting the Olga Reed Elementary School in Los Alamos, the event offered folks a chance to sell their chairs of any kind, whether they be quality antiques, hand-crafted artisan works, unique artist painted chairs, or treasures from the garage, “last-stop-before-the-dump.”

As fun as the fair was (the music was actually great), the highlight of the day was the Bell Street Farm. I ordered the pork belly-wrapped shoulder, sauteed crispy with roasted potatoes and onions and topped with 2 ‘over-easy’ eggs.

This is typically served with bread on the plate, so make sure you communicate that you can’t have it. I really enjoyed this dish. If it were a little later in the day, I may have ordered the Charcuterie and Cheese since I saw that they had Mary’s Gone Crackers gluten-free crackers available for purchase. How cool is that?

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Arch Rock Fish Happy Hour

26 Jul

Last night, I met up with a friend at Arch Rock Fish‘s Happy Hour. I started with some grilled corn, which I knew that I would love. Then I had the East Coast Lobster Tail.

This was served with some drawn butter and tasted very fresh. The last thing I ordered was the Spicy Tuna and Salmon Roll.

This was good, but I didn’t find it spicy at all. I made sure that they omitted the wasabi that would typically be placed on the plate. When you go here, they will give you a whole booklet that shows the allergy information for every item on the menu. Just keep in mind that it does not factor in cross contamination so stay away from anything fried!

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The Farmer and the Cook

22 Jul

Just about a 35 minute drive from Santa Barbara is a special spot called The Farmer and the Cook. This all organic, vegetarian cafe get most of their produce from their nearby farm. More importantly, on weekends, they have gluten-free pizza! I started with a special salad that had sweet corn, green beans, avocado, lettuce and a barbeque tomato vinaigrette. I then ordered the GF Mexican Pizza.

This pizza had caramelized onions, goat cheese, summer squash, red peppers, jalapenos and pesto. The crust of the pizza was predominantly garbanzo flour and had a really nice consistency. One of my fellow diners also got a gluten-free pizza. 

This one was the Yukon Gold Potato and Rosemary Pizza. It had potatoes, parmesan, mozzarella, red pepper, caramelized onions, garlic and rosemary. All of the ingredients used were so fresh and full of flavor. There is a small market inside where you can purchase produce and packaged goods, many of which are gluten-free! Additionally there are baked goods including a GF peanut butter cookie that was calling my name.

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Crushcakes Cupcake

21 Jul

Today was one of those days where I consumed anything and everything. When it came time to have some dessert, I headed over to Crushcakes and got a gluten-free red velvet cupcake. I am not a frequent cupcake eater, but the frosting on this cupcake may have changed that for me. Yum.

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Working up an Appetite on Segways

15 Jul

One of my favorite things to do is to be a tourist in my own town. So, this morning, a friend and I spent about two hours exploring Santa Barbara on a Segway while learning a few interesting things along the way. All of this exploring made us quite hungry… especially after passing some of our favorite eateries. After we were done, we headed over to Boathouse to grab some lunch. I had the Blackened Shrimp Quesadilla which was served with caesar salad and grilled onions.

This seemed like a huge portion for one person. It was really good though and I loved that it was served on corn tortillas! Be sure to ask for your caesar salad to be made without croutons as it typically comes with them.

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Friday Night at Petros

14 Jul

One of the best things about going to dinner with another Celiac is that you can share dishes! On Friday night, a Celiac friend and I went to Petros. We started with the Shrimp Sagnaki which I loved. It consisted of shrimp with a tomato basil feta cheese sauce. This sauce had the perfect amount of heat to it… I found myself eating just the sauce after all of the shrimp had been eaten! For my main dish, I had the fish of the day which was Sappara.

I chose to have this grilled with olive oil and lemon juice. It came with a generous portion of the Petros Horiatiki Salad.

One of the things I love about eating Greek food is that it is so easy to be healthy! This was the perfect summer meal.

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Autism Family Night at the Santa Barbara Zoo

12 Jul

Tonight was Autism Family Night at the Santa Barbara Zoo. To support those families that whose lives have been affected by autism, the Zoo’s Ridley-Tree House Restaurant served up a limited menu that featured gluten-free and dairy-free items. I ended up getting the Grilled Veggie Stir-fry which was served over rice. The only alteration I had to make to the dish was to omit the mushrooms since they had been prepared with soy sauce. This was fine by me since I am not a huge fan of mushrooms! It would be wonderful if the Zoo would place GF friendly dishes on their permanent menu for those who have to avoid gluten.

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The First Guest Post: Keste Pizza

9 Jul

Note: I have a very supportive group of people in my life that I am lucky to call “family”. It is impossible for me to try every GF friendly restaurant that I would like to, so sometimes it is nice to send my family to try these places on my behalf! So without further ado, the post below is from my wonderful father who loves trying new restaurants even more than me!

Tonight  I fulfilled a promise I made to my daughter and went to Keste Pizza on Bleecker Street in New York City.  This was a return trip for me and the object was to taste their Gluten Free Pizza.  Keste has had many rave reviews for their pizza, including being called “one of America’s 10 Best Pizza Parlors” and the “Most authentic Pizza Pie in New York”.  Since 2010 he has been building upon this reputation by adding Gluten Free pizzas to the menu.

We started the meal with the Rustica salad which is made with a spring mix, prosciutto di parma, artichokes, gaeta olives, lemon and extra virgin olive oil.  It was the perfect light start to a wonderful meal.  All of the salads seem to come with bread so you need to request that none is added to the plate.  We ordered two pizzas so that we could taste the Gluten Free one against the regular pie.  The menu has a special section for the Gluten Free pizzas (see picture) and we chose the Margherita, tomato sauce, homemade mozzarella, pecorino romano, basil and extra virgin olive oil.  Keste Gluten Free pizzas are all made with Caputo gluten-free flour (a combination of rice starch, cornstarch, potato starch, soy flour, and sugar) and cooked in a specially designated electric oven.

The regular pizza had a wonderful charred look to it.  The blistered dough managed to be light while maintaining a satisfying elasticity and chew.   And the Gluten Free pizza?  It appeared thinner but had that same wonderful charred look (see picture) as the original. When biting into the crust the taste profile was very similar to that of the original, although, perhaps a bit denser.  But absolutely satisfying.  The other ingredients just added to the overall experience.

Even if the Gluten Free pizza was all that was served here, I would return again for this tasty crust.  This is the first one that gives the Gluten Free eater the opportunity to have a truly Neapolitan style Pizza.  This is obviously the work of a master pizzaiolo.

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Quinoa for Breakfast

7 Jul

The other morning, I tried the Red Quinoa “Oatmeal” for breakfast at Scarlett Begonia. It had toasted almonds, apricots, maple syrup, house made ricotta and steamed milk. Other than substituting almond milk for the steamed milk, I didn’t need to make any substitutions!

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Night at the Ranch

4 Jul

The other night, we had dinner at Stonehouse, located at the San Ysidro Ranch. I started with the special soup which was a lobster curry soup. I also enjoyed some gluten-free bread! Yes, that is right. I was offered some GF bread.

I ordered the Grilled Washugyu American Kobe Beef Striploin without the blue cheese. It was incredibly tender. For dessert, we shared the chocolate souffle which was ridiculously good.

Is that one delicious looking dessert or what?

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