More restaurants offer gluten-free menus

NEW YORK — As a longtime chef in four-star restaurants, Joseph Pace had seen appreciative customers before. But nothing prepared him for the day that a well-dressed man walked into his Greenwich Village restaurant, ordered a pizza and a beer, and broke into tears.

That man, Pace recalls, had been diagnosed ten years earlier with celiac disease — an incurable affliction that makes the body unable to take anything containing gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye.

The pizza and beer that Pace serves in his restaurant Risotteria, like many other items on his menu, are formulated with substitutes for wheat and barley, making his place a magnet for people who have celiac disease. The customer told Pace that he hadn’t been able to enjoy a pizza and beer for a decade.

“This is what the restaurant business is,” Pace said. “Making people happy.”

Not every customer may be as effusive as that one, but Pace says he gets tremendous amounts of feedback from customers, which also helps him try out new recipes. His latest experiment is a pasta made from white beans. Rice, the main ingredient in risotto, is naturally gluten-free.

Founded just five years ago, Pace’s restaurant quickly became known among people with celiac disease, who make heavy use of the Internet and e-mail to share restaurant recommendations.

Several major restaurant chains are also reaching out to the celiac community. Outback Steakhouse, P.F. Chang’s and other restaurant companies offer menus of gluten-free dishes, and more are joining them.

Last month, Mitchell’s Fish Market, a 13-restaurant chain based in Columbus, Ohio, introduced gluten-free menus, and six months ago Boston-based Legal Sea Foods did the same in its 31 restaurants. Richard Vellante, the executive chef for Legal Sea Foods, said his company adopted a gluten-free menu after hearing requests from customers and also noticing that competing restaurants were doing it.

Many people with celiac disease miss the textures that come with eating foods that contain wheat, such as crusty bread, croutons in salads and crispy fried foods, which often contain bread crumbs or flour, Vellante said.

So Legal Sea Foods worked on making substitutes — chick pea croutons for salads; corn meal for frying and chick pea crumbs for baking instead of flour. Many items, they found, unexpectedly contained gluten and had to be excluded from the celiac-safe menu, including cocktail sauce, balsamic vinegar and blue cheese. Gluten is often added to foods as a stabilizing agent.

The response from diners has been strong, Vellante said, though he has yet to report an instance of a grown man openly weeping.

“A lot of restaurants don’t appreciate this,” Vellante said. “I was surprised by it. I did not realize how many people are gluten-sensitive.”