Gluten Free In Washington, District of Columbia
Since I had to go to Washington DC on a work trip, we thought we would take the opportunity to stay the weekend and visit the museums around the city. We got through five of them (American History, Natural History, Air & Space, American Indian, and the Botanical Gardens) and I think that's pretty good for a weekend. We walked the entire mall and we found a lot of safe places to eat gluten free food!
We ended up here after opting out of another nearby restaurant. They had a gluten free menu and were easily able to leave the dairy out of my fajita dish as well. Everything was good and I would equate it to a Chevy's kind of place, not spectacular, but just fine for a safe meal.
On my first night in the other Washington, I tried out Cafe Green since it was near the Whole Foods and their menu was clearly labeled with gluten free, soy free, and vegan options. I wasn't too hungry so I got the raw pizza appetizer and the tropical paradise smoothie. It was quite good, but perhaps not my cup of tea. The smoothie was also good, but certainly not the best I've had, although I am surely a west coast fruit snob. It was an easy spot to go and grab a safe bite to eat.
In a city of white table cloth restaurants, Open City was a nice place to go for a more casual atmosphere. It's a really interesting place that also happens to be right by the Woodland Park Metro stop, making it easy to get to. They have a considerably large gluten free menu, which even offers most of their sandwiches in bread less fashion. The food we got was all good quality and the fries were even gluten free (which our waitress was quite diligent on checking for me). My only real minor complaint was that I ordered the bread less BLT, which promised "with lots of smoked B" in the menu, and it only came with 3 pieces of B! In my opinion that's just the bare minimum for a BLT, but I may also be a BLT snob.
One of the things I wanted to do during my time in DC was to window shop in Georgetown, so I picked out the Peacock Cafe as a place to refuel after walking around. All of the gluten free items are *-ed on their regular menu and all of the employees seemed to be aware of what my needs were. It seemed like they probably received some training on it. I got a grilled salmon dish with sweet potatoes and asparagus. Even though I'm not much of a fish person it was very good and very flavorful. They had a good selection of dishes, including some small plates and gluten free pasta. Overall, it seems to me like a great place to go!
I'm not much of a cupcake person, but I was in the neighborhood so I tried both their vanilla and chocolate gluten and dairy free cupcakes. Both were quite tasty and reasonably priced for one of these "fancy" cupcake places. The frosting in particular was very yummy and not too sweet.
This place was CRAZY! I have never been to any grocery store on any day that was this busy. They had announcements over the intercom like an airport with which checker was free and the lines extended all the way back into the aisles. I found a couple new cereal items to try and they seemed to have a good selection of gluten free goodies.
And then, there was only one negative note for the trip. We tried to go to Oyamel Mexican Cocina, which has a gluten free menu, but ended up walking out before ordering. Why? Their tables were very dirty, the water had a lot of large black flecks in it, and we got a really poor vibe from the whole place. So that didn't really inspire any confidence in their ability to deal with cross contamination in the kitchen.
