Meg Haworth

My friend Earl Gibson happens to be an Episcopal Priest.  He's also part Zen Monk and part foot pampering enthusiast.  I think he owns stock in Bath and Body Works or, at least, ought to.  For Earl, moisturizing is definitely next to Godliness.

Earl also has a great love for food of all kinds - with a rather large propensity towards the junk food realm.  Being a friend of mine, I invited him to eat something healthy with me.  We were set to go to A Votre Sante in Brentwood but then, at the last minute, he invited me to "A Taste of Glendale" (California, that is) instead, and I said 'why not?'.  It's one of those community street-fests where lots of different restaurants contribute to the delinquency of food ho's for a fee.  I thought it might make a good blog post at the very least and would definitely be a great way to spend time with Earl.

When we arrived, we checked in at a table on the street where we received our blaze orange wrist bands.  It reminded me of the 'beer gardens' in college where they separated the women from the girls, or at least the minors from the legals, by making them stick out with a sore wrist.  We were properly marked for our evening of food on the street. 

We trooped off down the street with out trusty map where we happily found Mexican food.  I rejoiced, as most Mexican food (especially in Southern California) is great for the gluten free eater.  The first chafing dish, however, was filled with wheat tortilla-wrapped foodstuffs.  With 13 years of gluten free living, I can just look at (or smell) a tortilla and know if it has wheat in it.  But there, in the next dish, tostadas -- without cheese!  I filled my plate with a tostada and promptly dropped it on the sidewalk!  Dangit!!!  It truly had become "street food". 

I held my plate up to the guy with the spatula, donned my best Oliver Twist face and held back from saying, "May I have some more please, sir" with my too oft practiced British accent.  I felt like the reference would be lost in the language barriers and in the business of the moment -- not to mention the sheer nerdiness of the expression. He ignored me for a bit but eventually placed another tostada on my plate.  And it was good . . .

Next up was Italian.  I approached the table with full certainty that there would be nothing there for the gluten free and probably less for the dairy free.  Sure enough, the table was filled with penne pasta with the least amount of sauce possible -- a mountain of starch with a dolop of sauce.  I took one bite and handed it to Earl to polish off.  The verdict on that was to just skip the Italian restaurants if you go to a street fest.

At that point, we had developed a thirst in need of quenching.  Since there were no bars participating, we deviated from the tour to a hole in the wall sports bar named Shooters where, we two "whiskeypalians" bellied up and ordered lemon drops.  Yum!  We were properly relaxed when we realized we had little time left to find enough food to justify our outing.

The next stop was the best and the most accessible to the gluten and dairy free consumer.  We had sushi!  This great restaurant had big trays of salmon and tuna ready for us.  The line was non-existent. We had stumbled onto a golden, no platinum opportunity.  Lots of sushi and only two people equaled happy palates and tummies.

There was one last place we had to go to.  Earl absolutely raves about Porto's Cuban Restaurant where he says the pork sandwiches are delectible.  In this Cuban bakery, we were hard pressed to find gluten and dairy free food save for the traditional arroz con pollo (chicken with yellow rice) and other tomato based meat dishes.  Luckily for me, those are my favorite things in Cuban dining along with fried plantains. 

This night, the food included at Porto's consisted of deep fried potatoe and spiced balls with meats in them.  They were delicious but not gluten free.  The thing that tasted the best and was worth the entire trip AND made me infinitely grateful that my gluten allergies have been healed were the guava pasteries.  I love guava anything!  These were so delicious, I would have eaten one off the sidewalk had I dropped it like I did the tostada.

Earl and I ended the night listening to live jazz at another local hang out where we sipped cabernet, laughed and reviewed the evening.  The verdict was, if you are gluten and dairy free, you may not want to go to a street fest like this.  Risking reactions are not worth it even though the fun quotient is quite high.  Since sushi was the top pick, you may as well cut to the chase and eat there.

And on the church front, Father Earl informs me that you can now get a gluten free communion wafer through your local Episcopal or Catholic church.  He does, however caution that if you are Roman Catholic, the Pope has not endorsed the gluten free wafer.  So if you need a blessed wafer, go Episcopal. In fact, if you want to drink lemon drops, listen to jazz, sip cabernet, eat tostadas, sushi, bad pasta and guava pasteries (off of the sidewalk), Father Earl will be happy to bless you wherever you are.