Gluten free Tampa Bay – Cathy Salustri

#BecauseGluten: Pizza!

It’s not the same when gluten-free, but still pretty damn good.

While writing this, I’m sitting in a place called V Pizza in Jacksonville Beach, eating a delicious gluten-free margherita pizza and chatting with the owner about why we cannot abide New York (guess where we were both born?).

Too rude, too cold, too busy, too crowded… the list goes on and on.

And yet, New York has one food item we don’t: real pizza. Even as I type that, my mouth remembers Sal’s Pizza in Mamaroneck, where my mother — who has a pathological aversion to returning to her homeland — insisted I dine when I made a voyage north three years ago. That was, of course, pre-celiac diagnosis. A quick check of the menu confirms what I suspect — Sal’s doesn’t make a gluten-free pizza crust. Though the restaurant is able to ship a pizza anywhere in America, alas, that does me no good.

In all the ways that having celiac has made me bitter (hey, acceptance doesn’t mean not bitter), pizza has, oddly, not been one of them — because pizza hasn’t been the big deal I thought it’d be for me. It helps, I think, that, aside from a doomed-from-the-start love affair with Pizza Hut’s Priazzo, I was always a thin ‘n’ crispy gal rather than a pan pizza type. I blame New York, again; with pizza, I’m used to disappointment.

Eating GF pizza, you see, after a lifetime of eating Florida pizza is about the same as eating Florida pizza after a lifetime of eating New York pizza. No, it’s not the same, but what the fuck, man? It’s pizza, and it’s still pretty damn good.

I’ve been blessed, too, by the GF craze sweeping across the country. I live in a society where you can buy the most ironic ingredient ever — gluten-free flour. Suck on that, Alannis. I can go to Westshore Pizza or Craft Kafé in St. Petersburg. I may hate — and I’m using the word hate here — Trader Joe’s for discontinuing the “good” pizza crust (pro tip: cauliflower is not the same), but I can continue to make the drive to Palm Harbor’s Ozona Pizza and get a truly fine GF pie.

In Tampa, the options are vast (well, not exactly — calling GF pizza options “vast” is akin to calling your grandma “old” when the earth itself is billions and billions of years older). Gourmet Pizza Company brags about its GF pies in South Tampa (I’ve yet to try it), and the Channel District location of Precinct Pizza delivers to our offices in Ybor City; when I made Ray and Meaghan taste Precinct’s variety at work, they didn’t even wince.

So, yes, I can suck it up and piss and moan my way through an Udi’s crust if I have to. Luckily, however, I don’t.

We have decent gluten-free pizza here.

The key, I suspect, is in the other ingredients. Fuck cauliflower. Seriously, y’all. It’s yummy in a salad and OK as a rice substitute, but as a pizza crust it’s like watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time on VH1 — ain’t nobody gonna be throwing toast at your ass at 1 a.m. Get some buffalo mozzarella, juicy plum tomatoes and the extra-ist of extra virgin olive oils and 12 minutes later you’ve forgotten that the dough isn’t made with wheat.

I guess what I’m saying is: GF pizza isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. Bad gluten-free pizza is.

Thankfully, I’ve yet to find it in the Bay area.

This article initially appeared in Creative Loafing.

#BecauseGluten: A hearty thank you

Locally, there are a few gluten-free standouts that deserve my gratitude.

This week, CL Managing/Online Editor Scott Harrell has inspired us to be vocally thankful. And, locally, there are a few standouts — from a gluten-free point of view — that deserve my gratitude.

By now, you probably know that Craft Kafé, where everything is gluten-free, is my safe haven. Teddy Skiadiotis and his crew are the absolute best, and they create quite possibly the best quiche I’ve ever eaten — with a flaky, GF crust. They also did an exceptionally tasty brunch for us the day after our wedding, making all who suffer from what my family calls “The Salustri Stomach” rest a little easier.

Almost any Mexican place worth its margarita salt has plenty of GF offerings, but Nueva Cantina‘s Paul Daubert knows his protocols. Before we knew he was the chef, a friend suggested him for our wedding. He outdid himself with a huge seafood boil that was GF (because clams, shrimp, corn and potatoes don’t have gluten anyway, I don’t know that our guests felt they were suffering because of my stomach’s failings).

I sing the praises of Pia’s Trattoria so much I should be embarrassed. Notice the word “should.” I’m proud to say the owners reacted to my diagnosis by coaching me on what to say and ask at a restaurant, and also added a gluten-free version of their sour orange pie to the menu (they, too, outdid themselves with a GF and gluten-intense dessert table at our wedding).

PJ’s St. Pete Beach, Noble Crust and New World Brewery (hurry up with the new place, please!) all have GF beer that’s not the tastes-like-kitten-tears Redbridge — and Noble Crust also has a tasty gluten-free pizza crust. I’m still exploring — and trying to take off the 30 pounds I gained while feeling sorry for myself and eating crap-packed GF food — but these guys have all made my year infinitely easier.

Gluten-free pancakes. Photo by Cathy Salustri. — Oh, pancakes, how I’ve missed you. Photo by Cathy Salustri

And then there’s all of you. I don’t know how new diagnoses get through the early stages of going GF without a cadre of readers who have been, quite honestly, amazing.

Earlier this month, I spoke at the Festival of Reading. My book has nothing to do with gluten or the lack of it in my life, but I was pleasantly surprised to meet more than a few of you who knew me from this column. One reader gave me some amazing tea, and another — whom I met some years back while researching my book — brought me a recipe for clementine cake, a dessert I’ll make this week (and report back).

Yes, I’m staying GF for Thanksgiving, which is only the second time I’ve baked in 2017. It’s because of you that I’m willing to try. Your suggestions and reassurance have helped me find the best “flours” (shout-out to our food critic, Jon Palmer Claridge) and ways to bake.

For someone who admits she was a total dick about gluten-free people pre-celiac, y’all have come through in amazing way. I am thankful.

This post appeared originally in Creative Loafing Tampa.

#BecauseGluten: Ozona Pizza, I’m in love

This Palm Harbor joint’s garlic knots and pies taste like… real bread. And garlic butter. And cheese.

Just writing about this pie makes me want to go get some. It’s add-90-minutes-to-my-ride-home-to-stop-by-Ozona-Pizza worthy.

As a rule, gluten-free pizza simply isn’t that good. Oh, sure, I’ve had some intimate moments with Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Pizza Crust (which may be the best gluten-free item they sell), and Craft Kafé does a tasty piece of GF pizza. But sometimes I want to sit in a pizzeria with paper napkins and dip some garlic knots in marinara, admiring family photos and kitsch on the walls until my waitress brings out a metal pan with cheese oozing off the crust.

When you have celiac, true pizza parlors — not this noveaux-artisanal-pizza-by-the-foot-what-is-the-provenance-of-your-arugula bullshit — are no less than Dante’s third circle of hell. That’s why when CL photog Jen Ring suggested we meet in Palm Harbor for pizza, I had, to say the least, my doubts. She knew of two places in the area, she wrote in a text, that offered GF pies.

*Put Ozona Pizza on your bucket list. Photo by Jennifer Ring.*

We met at Ozona Pizza, and I cautiously, which is an understatement, ordered GF garlic knots, then helped myself to a Red Bridge out of the cooler. Red Bridge, for those of you with more intestinal integrity than I who can drink “real” beer, is the Keystone Light of GF brews. But, hey, beer and pizza is like Tom and Jerry, or hot dogs and root beer, or Russia and President Trump: They go together.

As I sit down, I realize the woman taking our order is the owner. What the hell, I wonder, am I going to say to her if I hate the food? She’s super friendly and proud of her place and incredibly invested in people liking her food. This could be awkward.

The garlic knots taste like... real bread. Photo by Jennifer Ring. — *The garlic knots taste like… real bread. Photo by Jennifer Ring.*

I bite into a garlic knot, and — oh, holy sweet baby Jesus. I’m in love. They taste like… real bread. And garlic butter. And cheese. As I reach for my third knot, while still chewing the second, I realize Jen and I intended to share these. I push the basket toward her and mumble over bits of doughy goodness that she should have one. Then I order another basket, plus two GF pizzas — one for here and one for home.

I’ll say this about the pizza: I intended to have one slice with Jen and split the second pizza with my fiancé later that night at home. That… devolved… quickly. I ate half the pizza in front of us and decided I didn’t need to eat later.

People, I can’t explain to you how good this pie tasted. Even if you don’t like GF pizza (and by and large I don’t blame you), it’s damn tasty. I started browsing the menu and realized how easy it’d be for our office to eat here (we’re everything from full-on carnivores to paleo vegans), as there are even vegan, dairy-free pizzas available.

Apparently, Ozona Pizza also makes regular pizza, which is its mainstay.

The crust may not look exactly like Cappy's, but it tastes — I feel guilty saying this — better. Photo by Jennifer Ring. — *The crust may not look exactly like Cappy’s, but it tastes — I feel guilty saying this — better. Photo by Jennifer Ring.*

I’m too full to try anything else, but I vow to return and perhaps be somewhat less of a glutton.

Later that night, though, my fiancé opens the pizza box and the smell of a real pizza parlor smacks me in the face.

The pizza is gone by midnight.

This feature initially appeared in Creative Loafing.

#BecauseGluten: Make me a sandwich

Triumph and heartbreak with Cali-based La Brea Bakery.

“Cathy, I have found your new favorite gluten-free bread!”

Normally, I would delete any email that used my first name in the subject line, but gluten-free bread that tastes good is like ice cream with no calories, wine that won’t get you drunk and a Harrison Ford who isn’t stubbornly in love with Calista Flockhart. I want to believe. Odds are, it isn’t going to happen. Still, there I am, waiting outside his mansion, with my bowl of chocolate ice cream and glass of wine.

The email was from a PR rep for La Brea Bakery, who’d offered to send me some sample loaves to try. Sure, I told them, thinking, “What the hell… we can try in on our podcast and, if — when — it sucks, it’ll be fun capturing people’s reactions.”

When the big box of bread arrived, David and I decided to take a sneak taste, to know what to expect when we made everyone eat it during the podcast recording. So sure were we that it’d taste like crumbly bits of potato, wood fiber and sadness that we hesitantly split a piece.

Now, I have no choice. If I want to eat bread, it must be gluten-free, and I’ll be the first to tell you, gluten-free bread is not, technically bread (everyone saw my last #BecauseGluten column, right?). You need gluten for it to be bread. The whole point of bread is the way the gluten binds the molecules of flavor together — and, apparently, kills the lining of my duodenum. David, though, is a live-on-the-edge kind of guy, by which I mean he eats more than beef, shellfish and lunch meat (work in our office for a day to realize how rare that is, because we are a gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian, non-beef-eating, why-would-you-eat-something-with-a-face, I-only-eat-yellow-foods-on-Tuesday, I’m-fasting-until-4-o’-clock, how-can-you-eat-commercially-farmed-vegetables, is-that-kale-dolphin-safe type of office). However, his husband, Larry, does not eat gluten, and so every morning David and Larry feast upon slices of gluten-free cinnamon raisin toast. In short, David knows the pain of bad gluten-free sliced bread, which, really, is most of it.

Watching us eat the La Brea white bread was like watching a commercial. As we chewed, time slowed down. Our eyes met across the counter; we smiled in pleasant surprise.

“This…” David floundered, grasping for words. “This… tastes like real bread.”

And it does. This bread is the best gluten-free bread I’ve ever tasted (and, if memory serves, better than a lot of gluten-filled bread I’ve eaten). The next day, our food editor, Meaghan, made some toast and some happy noises.

“Don’t put the bread away,” she said. “I’m probably going to want to make more toast.”

I sent El Cap to work with some, and he texted me and told me how much he loved the bread.

Almost everyone at the podcast tasting agreed: They would eat this bread. One holdout, our food intern Alex, said she’d eat it, but not on purpose.

Now, the heartbreak. While Publix does sell bread from this California-based bakery, it doesn’t sell the gluten-free variety. No one within 100 miles of the CL offices in Ybor City does, actually. And, unless you have Amazon Fresh in your town (we don’t), you can’t mail order it.

So what do you do? You march into Publix and take advantage of the grocery giant’s generous customer-service policy that allows you to ask them to order it for you. Seriously. It’s about $5 a loaf, more than reasonable for gluten-free bread. I confirmed this with Meaghan, whose family has some sort of shrine to Publix in the living room (everyone in her family works there, I think). All you have to do is go to the customer-service desk and ask them to special-order La Brea Bakery gluten-free bread, and they’ll do it (at least I’m hoping).

You won’t be sorry. Pinky swear.

This article originally appeared in Creative Loafing.

#BecauseGluten: Celiac cheat days are a thing, right?

Maybe I can have gluten one day a month.

As long as I’m being honest here — and, really, I find when discussing my intestines for roughly half a million of my closest friends, honesty works best — I would’ve happily wallowed in anger for a lot longer than I did if not for Meaghan Habuda, CL’s intrepid food editor and my appetizer BFF.

See, I’m familiar with anger. I’m comfortable in it; I know how it feels against my skin, and, yeah, it’s like an itchy wool coat that doesn’t flatter my figure at all, but I know where to find it. So staying there would’ve been easy, except Meaghan made me feel bad. We had decided to go grab something to eat and get a drink after work, and — for reasons not at all related to anything we stand for at CL, like local, fresh ingredients or innovative dishes — found ourselves at the Tyrone Square Ruby Tuesday (we judge us more than you ever could).

Meaghan wanted to write about a new ice cream something-or-other in the area, so Calypso and I sat on the dog-friendly patio and perused the menu (well, OK, I perused and she lay down, bored with life and unable to get to any of the good crumbs). Certainly something here would be gluten-free, right?

At this point, I continue to cling to the idea I don’t have to tell people I have celiac and that I can find workarounds with maybe a little gluten here and there to accommodate what I still refuse to admit is a disease.

By the time Meaghan arrived, I’d found a compromise: some sort of dip with Parmesan, and we’d get it with corn chips instead of pita. Still unwilling to utter the words “gluten” or “celiac” in public, I ask in what I thought was a casual tone if the topping had breadcrumbs in it, and if I could get the corn chips instead of pita. The waitress answered my questions — she didn’t think so, and of course I could — and she walked away, turned back and fixed her gaze on me.

“Are you gluten-free?” she asked.

I felt the white rage bubble up.

“Apparently.”

She nodded and disappeared inside.

“You were so mean to her,” Meaghan (unquestionably the nicer of us; see above) said. “She was only trying to help, and you yelled at her.”

I only had a moment to ponder what a jackass I’d been before a man with a walkie-talkie wire in his ear came over to our table, introduced himself as the manager, and informed us the cheese dip we’d ordered likely had come into contact with gluten and, as such, wouldn’t be set down in front of me.

My anger dissolved into abject horror. It was as if a secret agent from the bowels of the Ruby Tuesday lair had come out with a top-secret gluten warning. So much for trying to surreptitiously order gluten-free food. So much for walking a thin line between gluten and gluten-free without anyone noticing.

To his credit, he tried to help me find something for a pre-dinner snack. I settled on cauliflower, which tasted nothing like cheese dip.

I didn’t apologize to the waitress, who came over and apologized for not being able to bring me the food I wanted. I started to strategize in my head.

Maybe I can have gluten one day a month, I told myself. Like a cheat day.

Then I floated this past my medical team.

“No,” said Dr. Gorgeous’ PA. “If you have celiac — and you do,” she said, seeing the look on my face, “you shouldn’t have gluten. Ever.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.”

Nevertheless, I persisted.

“OK, but, I don’t get sick, right?” I didn’t wait for her to answer. “So, if, say, I had gluten every now and then, or in small amounts, how much could I have before it damaged the villa in my intestines?”

“With an actual celiac diagnosis, the amount of gluten you can have,” she said, and my eyes widened with hope, “is none.”

“Even if I don’t get sick?”

She didn’t sigh with great patience, which is to her credit.

“So, here’s the thing: Gluten may not make you sick now, but once you’re gluten-free for a few months, if you have gluten, it will probably make you sick.”

Great.

Next up: Depression.

This article originally appeared in Creative Loafing.

#BecauseGluten: Me? Celiac? Impossible!

For me, the first stage of celiac disease was denial.

From my friend Meaghan Habuda, when she was the Food & Drink editor at Creative Loafing and I wrote this for her: #BecauseGluten is a new semi-regular column chronicling CL A&E Editor Cathy Salustri’s journey into an involuntary gluten-free lifestyle. She’s taking her recent celiac diagnosis kinda hard.

I stared at the phone message, hoping my iPhone had transcribed it wrong:

“This is Kristin from Center for Digestive Care. We have your EGD and lab results back and they are suggestive of celiac disease. Can you call me back?”

Suggestive of celiac.

Suggestive.

I called Kristin back and explained to her that I did not have celiac.

“It’s a trendy disease,” I told her as I pulled into the Fairway Pizza parking lot.

“That it is,” she agreed. “Nevertheless, you actually have it.”

“It’s incredibly rare,” I said. “And I don’t get sick when I eat gluten.”

“So, there are two tests we have to do for a positive diagnosis of celiac,” she continued, “a blood test and a biopsy. We did them both, and both of them suggest you have celiac.”

“Suggest? OK, so what else could it be?”

“Celiac.”

I made a follow-up appointment, thanked her and hung up the phone. I walked into the pizzeria and ordered eggplant parm with spaghetti and garlic bread. Screw celiac.

I hate the whole gluten-free fad that’s sweeping the nation. People swear off gluten like it’s crack, but most of the people I’ve met who do this don’t really understand what gluten is — and, consequently, what gluten-free means. They’re avoiding it to lose weight or because it’s healthier (which doesn’t work when you sub in gluten-free processed foods loaded with sugar and fake things) or because they don’t feel well and read about gluten on their friend’s Facebook page.

I hate it. All my friends know I do; for years I’ve joked I was allergic to gluten-free food.

When I took the job with CL last year, I found myself with excellent health insurance and a wonderful doctor. Dr. Ligia Perez took one look at my bloodwork and ordered a bone scan and a hematologist. A few weeks later I learned that at 43, I had anemia so severe she told me to stop working out until we could get it under control.

My hematologist said he’d never seen iron levels so low and ordered iron infusions. He also gave me a shot called Prolia, which would help halt the osteoporosis but could cause my jawbone to become necrotic. He then referred me to a gastroenterologist to figure out where my iron was going — I suspected ulcers — and I found myself staring at the incredibly gorgeous Dr. Patil, who had to be a good 10 years younger than me and said I needed a colonoscopy.

Middle age was looking just ducky.

“Why, exactly?” I asked.

“It’s possible you have celiac,” Dr. Gorgeous told me. I politely replied that I did not have the “disease of the day.”

“It is incredibly rare, but given your symptoms” — anemia and osteoporosis combined with what my family calls “The Salustri Stomach” (when we get stressed, we become physically ill) — “you have a one in five chance of having it.”

Although I disagreed, the medical community seemed rather concerned as to why my body had almost no iron and also why my bones had started to disintegrate at a (relatively) young age. I couldn’t argue that I could barely get out of bed some days, and I did want to feel better, so I agreed to an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. Once they found the ulcers I had diagnosed myself with, I could get back on track.

I’m not going to go into the horrors of the colonoscopy except to say, there’s something not right about looking at an extremely good-looking man and knowing that, in a few minutes, he’s going to be more intimate with your bowels than any human being has a right to be.

A few days later, the phone call from Kristin. That night, Barry and I went to PJ’s for some oysters and contemplated what celiac meant. I declared I would only tell my family — if you have celiac, your family members may have it as well — and a few close friends. Our favorite waiter, Enoch (we go to PJ’s a lot), came over to see how we were doing and noticed I’d ordered Redbridge, a gluten-free beer that tastes like kittens dying.

“Oh, hey, are you gluten-free?” he asked.

“Me? Hell, no. That’s such a bullshit thing!” I said. And when our server came over, I ordered a Bud Light Lime. “See? No gluten-free here.”

“Yeah, it has gotten crazy. People do it because it’s popular,” he laughed and went back to his tables.

“See?” I told Barry. “This is what it means. I can’t tell people. They’ll think I’m an asshole capitalizing on a trend. I know, because I am that person.”

I finished the Bud Light Lime — gluten and all. To make my point, I grabbed a packet of crackers off the table and ate them, too.

Karma, man. She’s a gluten-y bitch.

Next up: Anger.

Note: This post initially appeared in Creative Loafing.