How excited am I to note that not only do we have gluten free pizza again, but FOUR DIFFERENT restaurants are offering it?! I would also like to thank everyone who commented on the last post about Pizza, leave it to celiacs to make it their favorite topic of conversation. It wins for most comments ever on this blog. lol...
Please be sure to patronize each one in turn so we can keep our GF pizza available for a long time to come!
The Mississippi Pizza Pub in NE Portland.
Picazzos Pizza in the SE neighborhood of Sellwood.
Garlic Jim's up in Salmon Creek. (That's Vancouver Washington) Crusts are made by Bavarian Mills also local to Vancouver, WA.
Smokey's Pizza. Please note it's the St. John's location (in Vancouver WA) only! (They use Ener-G crusts)
Grain Damaged - A blog for celiacs, non-celiac gluten sensitive, gluten intolerant and gluten sensitive people in the Portland, Oregon area, from the Gluten Intolerance Group of Portland
10 comments:
I get concerned about wheat flour being all over the place in pizza restaurants. How do they minimize contamination?
We went to Mississippi Pizza Pub last night for pizza, and it was great! It was the closest thing I've had to the pizza I remember - except it didn't make me feel terrible afterwards. I even got to drink beer with my pizza. They offered both Bard's and RedBridge. We'll be back. My husband, who doesn't have to eat gluten-free, liked it.
We ate there last weekend. Unless they change their practices, we will NEVER eat there again (for a GF meal) There is flour EVERYWHERE. There was a dusting on the tables, on the counters, the drinking glasses-eveywhere! The guys who work there told me they didn't think it was a good idea to offer the GF pizza because the risk of CC is so high, they've already had calls from people who have eaten there and gotten sick. I personally stood there and had to remind the guy making the pizza to change his gloves, to take off his floured-up apron, etc... and although they cooked the pizza on parchment paper, they cooked it on the bottom rack UNDER the regular pizzas above. One of the 3 Celiac's in our group ended up sick, most likely from all the crumbs and dust all over the booths. (I kept my kids at the outside table and wiped it off myself) No doubt if I hadn't been standing there watching them make the pizza, my kids would have gotten sick. The regular pizzas are fabulous, so maybe without my celiac children...
The above post refers to Mississippi Pub
In response to the above comment: Mississippi Pizza is wroking hard to minimize the possible causes of cross contamination. Gluten free pizza is a new area we have entered in response to many requests form customers and it has taken a great deal of work and investment to develope the gluten free crust we are now offering. We take cross contamination very seriuosly, but again, it is a new area for us, and we are looking to the gluten free communty to help us learn how to improve. Air contamination is the most difficult challenge facing all pizza parlors wanting to serve to gluten free community. All pizza parlors have some amount of wheat that becomes airborn once pizzas begin to be thrown for the day.
What Mississippi Pizza will initiated doing in response to this issue is pre-packaging our cheese and pepperoni pizzas in sealed bags during the morning hours before any other pizzas are made.That way, for gf customers that are particulaly sensitive to cross contamination, they could buy there pizzas presealed and cook them in the privacy of their home.
Secondly, we are also working on getting a seperate set of ovens for cooking only gf pizza in, to elimminate ovens as a source of cc.
We have given our staff a formal training in prearing, handling and cooking gf pizzas. But this is ofcourse a completely new area for our staff and it will take time for them to learn. Agian, we really want our gluten free experiment to work, but it is a very complex challenge, even more so than we ourselves realized. We encourage your suggestions, ideas and even you critisisms. Without your input and support we cannot improve.
I have never once had a reaction to Mississippi Pizza and have found the staff to be so well informed and helpful it makes me want to cry out of gratitude. Perhaps I am not as sensitive as some others or perhaps I am just more patient because I am so grateful. There is a risk of Cross Contamination just being on a city bus, nothing is guaranteed. You just do the best you can to minimize things but to expect the entire world to be gluten free is impossible. Mississippi Pizza's efforts should be applauded. I will continue to go there-we live in Beaverton and try to go every other weekend--we'd go every weekend if a tank of gas didn't cost more than the Pizza we are after!
An aside, I tried Picazzo's Friday and while I loved the fact that you can get a "Lunch Special" single slice of Pizza (makes me feel like a normal person!) I didn't love their crust. I am still grateful to have the option but as a crust review, Mississippi is much more traditional crust. Picazzo's is more of a fluffy egg bread with a crisp outside. Still delicions though, it just depends on what you are looking for!
Any news on Garlic Jims expanding it's GF crust? I've all but given up hope for them.
I do applaud Mississippi Pizza Pub for their efforts, but my son did get sick there. I believe it was from touching a booth and table top. In all the confusion I did forget to wash his hands, and I do take responsibility for that. The GF pizza was very good, but the restaurant was not very clean (gluten wise). The staff did also not seem fully educated about cross contamination when we ate there. But as we all know, there is a definite learning curve when it comes to cooking gluten free food without cross contamination.
On a side note, we've eaten at Picazzo's pizza twice now and it is fabulous! The restaurant is VERY clean and they make their GF dough in a separate room, place it on the pizza pans and seal it in plastic. They even offer gluten free cheesy bread and chicken wings. I feel very safe taking my son there. I could not recommend them more!!!
I left the above comments regarding MPP, I DO applaud their efforts and appreciate what you're trying to do, however, my daughter has such severe and violent reactions that I cannot take anymore chances. We can't eat there until some major, MAJOR changes are in place and the ENTIRE staff is educated--which wasn't my experience when we ate there. Regardless of how severe the reaction, for those with active Celiac disease, outward reaction or not, damage is being done. For me and my children, it's not worth the risk. I'm also not trying to be defamatory, I just want others to be aware of a potential issue. I would really hate for someone to get sick as I'm sure MPP feels the same.
YEAAAA!!!! Garlic Jims rolled out (tossed??) their Gluten Free Crust! We can actually order DELIVERY!!!! Tried it last night... so far (24 hrs and counting) no stomach trouble beyond what is almost always lurking there. And... it was YUMMY!
Picazzos Pizza is AWESOME... I have eaten there AT LEAST 6 times. If you go to their website it shares how they keep it all separate.
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