The Only On King - my lovely GF experience

From other posts, you may be able to tell that I am not really in the whole "pay lots of money for food" camp of the world. Hitting up swanky restaurants isn't my style and quite frankly, I think the $9.99 steak, potatoes & salad from Cracker Barrel is not only a great deal, but really tasty.

That being said, once in awhile, for special occasions, I enjoy a nice restaurant. Gluten free eating can make any eating experience a pain in the ass. But if I'm going to spend a bit of my hard earned dough at a restaurant, it better be a damn good GF experience or I'm just going to be grumpy with the situation.

Okay, okay. Enough of my blabbing about my thoughts on food and restaurants. Let's get to the point. If you live in or near London, Ontario and you have not eaten at The Only on King (http://www.theonlyonking.ca/), you are missing out. Not only am I totally comfortable saying that this IS the best restaurant in London, it is also the best restaurant I have ever eaten at. And it's not just me who thinks this, they were voted the number 6 is restaurant in Canada in 2008! Awesome.

Alright, before we get to the food and the gluten free experience, let's just focus on the restaurant. Not in the greatest location in London (King Street can be shotty, but hey, can't every street in downtown London), but it doesn't matter at all. Once you're inside, it's an adorable little oasis. Everyone who works there is super friendly and good looking to boot (the chef's cute and the waiter was smokin' hot - just an added bonus for a girls night out). The decor is awesome and the vibe is great. Plus you feel like you're all by yourself regardless of if you're sitting in the middle of the restaurant.

Anyways, when I called for the reservation (a week and a half ahead of time - just an FYI), I mentioned that I'd need gluten free food. When I got there, our server was aware of everything on the menu that I could eat or have modified to eat gluten free (I kind of gather that the chefs discussed it ahead of time with the waitress, which is always a nice feeling when eating GF - especially since she asked if it was just to be gluten free or if it was celiac disease, which is also nice to know that they don't think I'm just doing the GF thing to be part of the fad).

Two of the features were out (a pizza type thing and a tart type thing), but there was a cheese dish that was available. Unfortunately only two of the starters were GF, but I love love love the dressing on the mixed greens salad, so it didn't much matter to me. The majority of the main dishes were alright (except the swordfish that was marinated in a sauce that was soy based which apparently wasn't GF - major GF pet peeve. While a friend of mine informed me today that perhaps the gluten free soy sauces weren't as tasty as non-GF soy sauces, I just find it hard to believe. Like, could you just please not use HP sauce?? It would just make everyone's life easier). I was a little bummed that the only beef type dish was the one that was meant for two since I'm not an "adventurous" eater at all, but on my new found like of fish, I may have gone with the swordfish.

Anyways, I'm deviating.

I ended up getting the Cornish Hen which on the menu came with a risotto (or something like that that was beyond my sophomoric food knowledge) which apparently wasn't GF. So I left it in the hands of the kitchen to do something with summer veggies - which obviously ended up being super yummmmmmy.

And a bunch of the desserts were GF, however, I was eating out with my girls from work to "celebrate/mourn" our one friend moving to Toronto for work and a boy. Since I knew I was going straight from there to Joe Kools and then a bar for dancing, I thought better than to have dessert.

Anyways, I feel like there was some MASSIVE rambling in this post. Long story short: The Only on King is AMAZING. Good looking restaurant, people and super duper delicious food. Oh, and a super easy gluten free experience!! Loved it and I can't wait to go back!

A Trip to the Maritimes

My husband and I had decided to pack up the camping gear and head out to the maritimes for some east coast Canada fun. Before heading out, I decided to do a bit of research on gluten free eating just to make sure I could, you know, eat.

When I started googling, I came across "The Celiac Scene". Thank goodness! Never been there before, you've got to check it out: http://www.theceliacscene.com/

It's pretty awesome. It could use a bit better explanation for the places it lists as gluten free (ie. they have a GF menu, they simply understand the diet, they can make things special, etc., etc), but it is a great launching point for eating GF all across Canada.

I downloaded a bunch of lists for the cities I would be visiting, passing through, etc. and off we headed.


Halifax, Nova Scotia
The first night we were in Hali, I picked a restaurant on the list and off we headed.

We ended up at Talay Thai Restaurant. While the waitress was a bit of an idiot (as in, she brought out our food, then took back my husband's because it was made wrong, but then hadn't actually checked if my food was gluten free, and I sat there and ate while my husband watched me because they were re-making his "normal" food), it was an alright place to eat. The food was alright and, thankfully, I didn't get sick from it.

That being said, I think I would have tried somewhere a bit more Halifax-y the next time I was in town. It was basically just your basic Thai food.

We road tripped the next day (more to come on that later) and then had dinner back in Halifax. Since it was pouring rain out and we'd already spent quite a bit of money that day, we ended up at New York Fries at the mall - always a great choice :)

The next day we went to the Halifax Market at Pier 22. It wasn't the standard market day, so there wasn't much open (which was disappointing). However, the booth for Schoolhouse Gluten-Free Gourmet (www.schoolhouseglutenfreegourmet.com) was open.

First off, the food kicked ass. Seriously. Amazing. I bought a piece of carrot cake (awesome), cookies (fabulous), bread (tasty - a week after traveling in my car) and focaccia bread (which you can see a previous rant about focaccia bread in my office by going here). I wish I could get this stuff in Ontario because it was so frikken tasty.

Second, the girl who was working there (who I'm pretty sure owns/runs the company) was super nice and amazing. Actually, most people on the east coast were, but she was great. She proceeded to take the time to tell me all the good gluten free restaurants to go to in Halifax (and the good shopping areas too!), wrote them all down and labelled them on my map for me.

If you are in Halifax, you must get this GF food. Not only because it's awesome, but so are the people.

Later that day we stopped at Pete's To GoGo (www.petestogogo.com/) for lunch. It was your typical type sandwich place in what seemed like a office type environment. I had a great sandwich and they seemed very good at the whole GF thing. It was a bit pricy (hey, I'm cheap - can you blame me), but it was a nice quick lunch when we were trying to cram as much Halifax stuff into one day as we could.

That night we went in search of the Wooden Monkey by recommendation of the Celiac Scene and Schoolhouse GF. We found it and we decided that we had spent enough money that day and likely couldn't afford it. Which sucked. Because it looked tasty. Instead we popped next door to the Pizza Pizza and split a GF pizza.

Halifax had tons of GF options. If heading there, check out Celiac Scene before hand, give yourself time to scope out some of the options and then dig in. And find yourself some Schoolhouse GF - you won't regret it.

One other place I wish we had gone to was Henry House Restaurant & Pub. It was listed in my travel book as a great Halifax bar to check out and it was on Celiac Scene.

Chester, Nova Scotia

On our day trip from Halifax, we hit up all the great towns to the west of Halifax: Peggy's Cove, Chester, Lunenburg, etc. etc. We stopped in Chester and ate lunch at The Kiwi Cafe. This was a super cute cafe with a nice vibe (www.kiwicafechester.com/). It was a great spot to stop for a nice lunch - had a super delicious sandwich. It wasn't really a bang for your buck because the GF bread is about half the size of the regualr bread so my sandwich was approximately half the size of my husband's (even though I asked them to still put the same amount of toppings on because I was a starving). But, let's be honest - we know GF is over priced and small and a bit of a rip off everywhere, so really, it was just fine and dandy. I would definitely eat there again (felt like I needed to add that as it seemed like a bad-ish review, when really, it was a great spot).

New Glasgow, PEI

Prince Edward Island, by far, had the BEST food we ate on the entire trip. The two restaurants we ate at on the island were so super duper amazingly awesome that I just can't say enough good things about them.

The first day on the island, on the way to the campsite, we passed through New Glasgow, which I knew from the Celiac Scene had a gluten free restaurant. So - we stopped at the PEI Preserve Company. This place rocked my socks off. Obviously, the waitress was super amazing. Nice, friendly, etc., etc. Second, the menu listed which items were gluten free, which is just about my most favourite thing in the entire world.

There were lots of things on the menu that looked amazing, however, I immediately zeroed in on the potato pie with a maple bacon crust. Picture this: maple bacon with PEI potato, cheese, PEI potato, cheese, PEI potato, cheese, PEI potato, topped off with, maple bacon. Oh, and a bacon mayo. Accompanied by one of the most delicious Cesar salads I have ever had. Oh, here's a photo for you in case you couldn't picture it:

Okay - so that was AMAZING. Then it came to dessert. They had gluten free strawberry shortcake. Yes, that's right. Here, drool:

Alright - so this place clearly rocked my socks off. So much so that we went the next day and got potato pot pie again. We really went back because I desperately wanted strawberry shortcake, but they were out. So they offered to replace the shortcake part with chocolate cake. Don't worry, you can drool over this now too:

Moral of the story - EAT HERE!!


Charlottetown, PEI
I have - make that had - never eaten fish before. I had tried a piece of shrimp once and hated it. Where better to try fish than on the east coast, right? Right. Well my gluten free friends, feast your eyes on this: Brit's Fish & Chips (http://britsfishandchips.com/). With a dedicated gluten free fryer, it's a GF fish lover's paradise.

The waiter was awesome (obviously, he was from the east coast) and was shocked (and slightly appalled) that I had never eaten fish before. He recommended the haddock. Of course, I was just pumped about the fact that I could have GF chicken tenders (one of my favourite foods). So, I ordered chicken tenders. But my husband ordered the two piece haddock meal and they offered to do one piece in the GF fryer. Awesome. And, awesome it was. Like totally frikken delicious. Here's a pic of the food (my husband does have more than one shirt, but we ate here for lunch then had gone back to the PEI Preserve Company for dinner). Obviously that's his fish and chips at the top, but the GF fish is to the left and my yummy chicken tenders at the bottom:

All and all we had a wonderful trip and we ate great food!!!!