Gluten-Free Vacationing

Being gluten-intolerant certainly can make vacationing interesting. But Craig and I were looking forward to seeing "To Kill A Mockingbird" in Ashland, OR, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, so we figured we would have to make the best of it. It used to be that you could order a steak and potato from a restaurant and be assured of dining gluten-free. Unfortunately, many restaurants are now getting their steaks pre-seasoned in vacu-sealed packages, and the seasonings quite often contain soy sauce or some other seasoning (such as MSG) that we cannot eat.

I recently purchased The Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide from TriumphDining. Knowing that our travel route would take us through Portland, OR, and that we would be staying in both Grants Pass and Ashland, I checked the book for gluten-free restaurants that we could visit. After making my list of places to eat, we finished packing and got on our way.

We had a great time, in spite of off-and-on rain. We were in Grants Pass Thursday evening to Sunday morning, and then went to Ashland Sunday morning. On the way down, we stopped at Shipwreck Beads (of course...) and then at Bob's Red Mill in Portland. This is where a lot of my gluten-free flours come from. The store (it's huge, mostly with flours that they mill, not all GF) also has a café in it, and will substitute GF bread for any sandwich, so we had Reuben sandwiches -- it's been a long time since I had a Reuben on bread. We also stopped at the factory store in Woodburn just because it was an outlet store. We finally got to Grants Pass around 7:00 PM and then went over to the Fred Meyers to pick up a bit of gluten-free food, just in case the restaurants didn’t pan out.

On Friday and Saturday, we drove around town, shopped (antique shops, The Glass Forge, Savannah Faire), and generally had fun. We also ate at a place called The Vine -- the owner's wife is gluten-intolerant, too, so almost everything either is or can be made gluten free, including pizza, onion rings, and calamari. We didn't try the pizza, but we went twice and had both the onion rings and the calamari. I also had fish tacos and Craig had a burger -- all very good. The Vine is where we ate lunch on both days, and we went to G Street Bar & Grill for dinner -- the waitress at The Vine told us they have the best sushi -- apparently, G Street B&G also include Shiki, which is a Japanese restaurant. And yes, the sushi (especially the maguro and sake nigiri) was excellent.

On Sunday, we headed for Ashland, but stopped in Medford first -- no Starbucks(!) in Grants Pass, so we needed to get Frappuccinos. We also stopped at Costco and Fred Meyer, and got to Ashland around 12:30. We wandered around a bit and found another restaurant with a GF menu (and listed in the book). At Greenleaf Restaurant, I had a Mediterranean quesadilla with chicken. They use rice tortillas for the GF quesadillas -- very yummy.

Our hotel (the Ashland Springs Hotel) was about a block and a half from the theater, so it was easy to walk to the show. "To Kill a Mockingbird" was absolutely fantastic. It was no surprise that it is nearly sold out and very difficult to get tickets. If you're lucky enough to get more than one ticket for a show, you most likely won't be sitting together. I'm glad I bought ours in January -- and even then, I had to really search for a day that had two seats together and in a good location.

We left Monday morning and hit heavy squall lines pretty much all the way up to Portland. On the way up, we stopped at the Grave Creek Covered Bridge (you can see it from I-5). We only stopped long enough for a few pictures since the rain was threatening us again. We then stopped for gas and Starbucks in Roseburg, and made it back to Shipwreck Beads by around 4:30 (yes, I had forgotten to get some things).

We stopped at the Mayan restaurant nearby to get some dinner. This was one restaurant not listed in the book that we thought would still be okay to eat at. Sadly, they marinate their fajita meat in a seasoning that includes soy sauce and their corn tortillas may also have wheat in them, so we left without getting any food. Before stopping at home, we went to SushiLand for dinner (although not listed in the book, we’ve had good luck avoiding gluten at this restaurant). And then we went home, tired but happy after a very enjoyable vacation.