Gluten Free Travel: Vacation to San Francisco

A few weeks ago, I went to Half Moon Bay, California… a half hour South of San Francisco.  This was my first vacation while eating gluten free.  Here are a few short stories about attempting to eat gluten free.

Flight to San Jose: I had an early flight so, like usual, I skipped breakfast.  On the first half of my flight on Southwest Airlines, they were offering a variety of snacks.  When the flight attendant came around to my seat:

Me: “I can only only eat the peanuts.”

FA: “You can have whatever you like.”

Me: “I’m allergic to wheat.”

FA: “I’m so sorry about that.”

Me: “Thanks.  (I bet you are sorry)

After I started eating the honey roasted peanuts, I look at the ingredients and see that they have wheat in them.  Crap!  Now, I don’t remember the exact ingredient, but I think it was wheat starch.  On an empty stomach, I can occasionally tell if something bothers my stomach… and these did a little.

San Diego Airport: Someone mentioned that Uno’s Pizza has locations in airports, so I went looking for one.  I found one!  It was a little express style restaurant, so I went to the counter and asked if they made gluten free pizzas here.  The mexican employee and I then entered a short conversation where we both were speaking a foreign language to each other… I eventually gave up and walked off.

Connecting Flight: I ask for the peanuts again, because I am starving!  This time they bring me the normal dry roasted gluten free peanuts!  I devour the 2 bags and start looking for the flight attendant.  I politely(in the opposite way of how he asked me to “completely turn off” my phone) asked for more peanuts.  He brought me two packages of honey roasted peanuts, WITH GLUTEN!  I need to learn to speak up and be an inconvenience on service people to fit my special needs diet.

Half Moon Bay Mexican: So when I don’t know what to eat, I always resort back to nachos. For my first night in HMB, we went to Spanish Town.  I ordered chicken nachos and my aunt ordered the same.  After a couple bites, I started notice a “fishy” taste.  At that moment, my auto looks up and says, “this kind of tastes like tuna.”  By the end of the meal, we were both convinced they had mixed tuna in with the chicken.

Twice later in the week we went to Tres Amigos.  This is more of a fast food style mexican restaurant where you order and pay at the counter, then they bring you your food.  the nachos here were pretty good.  I had the chicken and carnitas(pork) nachos.

Amici’s East Coast Pizza: On our first trip into the city, I really wanted to try a GF pizza that I could only get in California.  So we went to Amici’s on Lombard St.  I am writing a new blog article about my experience there.  Overall, it was overpriced and typical gluten free bread consistency.

V. Sattoui Winery:  We had a great picnic lunch!  I highly recommend V. Sattoui for a lunch.  I found some great gluten free crackers and other foods in their deli to eat.

Random foods:  Ice cream in Salsalito.  Enchaladas with corn tortillas.  Progresso clam chowder soup.  In’N'Out Burger(no bun).  Taco Bell tostadas.

Overall, it was a great trip and eating gluten free didn’t get in my way!

I came across this article that tells about some other gluten free places to eat in San Francisco.