Subheadline (via Kath) That’s One Way To Silence Your Critics
The Good News: Boulder’s sustainable, eco friendly and overly delicious Kitchen Cafe is turning five years in business!
The Bad News: they poisoned me to celebrate.
Let me expand, but first, some pretty food pictures:
Community night is a Monday Night tradition, a huge table seated by many separate groups. Food is served on a platter which forces you to pass the dishes around to your new friends. One of the better meals I have ever had, consistently.
I was taking my friend Matt Gist out to a nice dinner for coding out a family project for me. We were also joined by Nicole Glaros and Jen Mayer. I sat next to Jenifer from Use Real Butter (a kick ass food blog), her husband who was researcher from CU and their two guests from Sydney. Jenifer was amused that I read her blog. She has a much better post on the night. If I wasn’t poisoned, I would have a post of similar quality. Perhaps not. Moving on.
One of the best things about community night is the people you meet. Generally foodies, really nice and love their wine.
Weeks prior I made the reservation for four, noting that I was gluten free during the call. Simple enough, I had done this for five community nights before, all went off without a hitch. When we sat down, the waiter (nice guy) was alerted that I was that guy on the reservation. I should have been alerted that he really didn’t seem to take that much notice, saying to steer clear of the obvious breads.
So the meal. It was fantastic. Besides the whole ‘make you keel up in the fetal position for 15 hours’ bit, it was outstanding. Here is the menu, pretty kick ass offerings:
After the meal I tried to pay for Matt and myself, and the girls wanted to pay for their own meals. The waiter (read: poisoner) split the bill in a way I still quite cannot grasp: 2/3 on my card, 1/6 on each of the girls. If anyone has any logical rational for this, please let me know. I would figure the old 1/2 1/4 1/4 would have been, well, logical.
I walked over to my office, started editing photos and doing the usual late night writing of emails and making plans.
Then I fell over in pain. I was King John of England, the Kitchen was France. Poison. Something I ate had a high amount of gluten, and I was paying the price. My body went into a sort of shock, deciding that poison had no room in its warm habitat.
I called to report what had happened. The manager said that he didn’t know about a gluten allergy on the reservation. Perhaps next time I should request they put in all caps GLUTEN FREE: CELIAC DISEASE next to my name.
Or perhaps I should just expect this to happen every once in a while. I’ve seen diners hand the manager a card stating their allergies on one side, and the other side with big and bold numbers: 911. I don’t think I am ready for that drastic of action.
In Boulder the restaurants are fantastic. In New Zealand some of the restaurants had gluten free beer and even bread that I could eat (one such burger joint was like an In and Out style fast food place). The awareness in that country is much higher than in the states. The little we have up here is usually credited to the Atkins Diet, which really doesn’t cover the problem.
This gluten allergy rarely makes me really sick (I am very good about avoiding it), but is exhausting. I can’t eat at least half of the grocery store offerings, and some menus have less than 10% that I can order (breads and pastas are the highest margin items you can sell).
Sometimes I have small amounts on accident (grated cheese from the stores has gluten to keep the graters nonstick, for instance) and I generally just feel lethargic. Now that it is 24 hours after the incident, I am feeling better. Was very weak all day. Felt like laying down in the fetal position until about three oclock.
But what to do? Write a post with an overly snarky title. Check.
Next: figure out how long I am going to feel like this. Then: ride my new bike.
Sounds like better than today already.
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