Eating Out Gluten and Dairy Free in Hawaii

So one of the things that is most difficult about being gluten free is dining out.  And as that is one of my favorite things to do while socializing with friends.  My friend Jen has been gluten free for the last few months and we go out for dinner a lot so I've already had some experience dealing with and looking for gluten free food at restaurants but it can be kind of frustrating.  Add in being dairy free and things get a lot more complicated.  I ended up eating out quite a bit this weekend so here's a summary of the places I went, what I ordered and how my experiences were.  There is not a lot of info out there about gluten free food in Hawaii, so hopefully this might be helpful to others.

Zippys
Went and saw Argo with my parents and afterwards we went to Zippys for dinner.  I consulted with the waitress and we figured that pretty much the only thing that didn't have gluten in any form (including soy sauce was the new york steak.  Okay, that's fine, I love meat.  But side dishes were difficult because the french fries were fried in shared fryer and all their other potato based sides had milk or butter.  So I had white rice and corn.  Woo, thrilling.  The steak was not that good either, but what can you expect from an $11 steak from Zippys.  They gave me A-1 sauce which I slathered everything in, to give it some flavor.  So yeah, that was filling but not super satisfying.

Paina Cafe
This month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoRiMo) and I am currently in the midst of writing a novel.  I have a writing group that I started meeting with last year during NaNoWriMo and we meet on Saturdays at Paina Cafe.  When I am there I always get the same thing for lunch, the steak plate.  It comes with steak skewers, rice, salad and potato salad.  Typically I get the ranch dressing but I got balsalmic instead.  It also comes with some garlic aioli sauce for the meat.  Typically a garlic aioli is made of mayonnaise, garlic and spices so I figured it was okay.  I asked the dude at the counter to check the ingredient list for me twice and he never got around to doing it.  I decided to risk it.  I didn't feel anything after eating it so that's good.  It wasn't that much anyway.  Skipped the potato salad since I wasn't quite sure what was in it and the people working there don't appear to be that bright.

The Counter
I have found that it is good to do some research before you go into a restaurant for dinner if you are gluten/dairy free.  I went to the Counter's website and saw that they had a gluten free bun.  I had never seen that on the menu there so I figured I would give them a call the morning before we were planning on going.  I talked to a guy who was super friendly.  They indeed had a gluten free bun and he even checked to make sure that there was no dairy in the bun.  He also told me that their fries were fried in a separate fryer so they were safe from gluten.  HOORAY!!!!  Their bun was actually pretty decent and I opted for bacon since I couldn't have cheese and it was pretty good.  I am happy to find one restaurant that I can eat at relatively easily if I am gluten free.  Here is my tasty burger below.

Macaroni Grill

So typically chain restaurants do a pretty good job of having at least some gluten free options.  Probably because that is more common on the mainland than here.  Though I haven't tried to go into a really local place and try to get something gluten free.  I know that will happen at some point soon and it may be a lot more difficult.  So i went to Macaroni Grill's website  and saw that they also carried gluten free pasta.  Sweet!  But when I went there the next day it turns out that one did not.  Lame.  The waiter there seemed rather clueless about gluten free food and brought me this big book with allergen information that was super hard to figure out.  Unfortunately with no dairy my choices were limited to like plain salad and some of the meat dishes.  Kind of frustrating because I didn't really want to pay for a $20 lunch entree.  I ended up going with a chicken dish.  The veggies that came with it had breadcrumbs on them so I had to opt for some other grilled veggies.  Instead of butter everything was cooked with lemon oil.  It was good, but I was still kind of hungry afterwards since I had just done Zumba and didn't have a real breakfast.  The giant loaf of bread at the table was not helping either.  

So there you have it.  I think of all the places I visited the Counter won hands down.  Paina Cafe was good too because I didn't have to deviate too much from what I normally order.  Le sigh.  I could really go for some pizza right now.