A quick check with our waitress clarified… If it said OK next to it, it was a dish that could be made gluten-free. (Don't worry, I've already explained how disappointing it is to think you might be able to have the duck because you think they're using wheat-free tamari, only to discover that actually they mean you could have the duck, but only a flavourless adulterated version… they're new, I forgive them.)

A little back and forth with the kitchen clarified what actually would be gluten-free without alteration and we were off. Our host told us that the bites were literally one mouthful, like tapas and that the "share" plates could be smaller than expected and she recommended four to five of them for the three of us. That meant a slightly more expensive dinner than we'd been planning, but never mind. We started with half a dozen Tasmanian oysters, which were fresh and delicious. 

The share menu is divided into sea, land and earth. My meat-eating companion and I quickly settled on the Korean BBQ ribs to represent the land section. The three of us agreed the rice-crusted snapper with green papaya was the go from the ocean. We got potatoes roasted with garlic as a side, and my vegaquarian friend (not avoiding gluten) got a deconstructed version of the asparagus so I could have some asparagus (and she could have the brioche-crumbed egg… sigh).

It was a toss up whether the ribs or the fish were better. Both were amazing. One piquant and sticky with a spicy coleslaw and the other delicate and falling apart beautifully contrasting beautifully with the sharp chilli papaya salad. The potatoes were good and crunchy, with whole cloves of roasted garlic.

For dessert, I had fresh mango and strawberries with a teensy scoop of house-made coconut sorbet. To be honest, this was the only disappointment: although it was delicious, the size seemed stingy for the $12 price tag. The botrytis semillon went beautifully with it, though.

Huxtable's food is absolutely superb and the wine list is strong too. A tad expensive but once they sort out the gluten-free menu, this will be a terrific place to dine. I'm definitely going back to try their breakfast and brunch menus.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Huxtable
huxtablerestaurant.com.au
131 Smith St, Fitzroy
03 9419 5101

To start me off, I asked for something big and bold, with cherry and vanilla flavours. My waiter laughed and said, 'So, we're talking reds, then?" The glass he brought was divine… unfortunately I enjoyed it so much I forgot to ask what it was.

I was thrilled with the choices of entrées and mains. Starters included edamame and tofu steak, various skewered meats and nasu dengaku, the classic eggplant disk. Many of my old favourites were there, but with wheat-free tamari instead of regular soy. The bibimbap, a deliciously spicy mix of cold vegetables on warm rice, which I've had before, is listed along with tofu don and other delicacies. I decided the freerange chicken yakitori don was a must — it had been forever since I'd had one.

It was worth waiting for. Tender chicken, perfectly marinated, with fresh baby spinach leaves, shredded cucumber and toasted sesame seeds over warm rice. Mmmmm.

I'm sad that none of the soup dishes are done with rice noodles instead of udon, given how easy it is to use wheat-free fish sauces and tamari for the stock.

Dessert was only one option and it wasn't dairy-free, so my dining companion was forced to taste it for me. He said it was good but was obviously made that morning and refrigerated until now rather than absolutely fresh. I was forced to have a liquid alcoholic dessert (woe!) called an Orange Dragon which was as inventive and delicious as I remember the drinks: Dark Rum, Chambord, Sake, muddled orange & lime, topped with Sparkling Blood Orange. If you're wanting something simpler, try the plum wine.

Oh, and the film was good too…

Apart from listening to me on which gluten-free soy milk I preferred, they'd gone out of their way to find a truly superb gluten-free, dairy-free bread from local artisanal bakery Fatto a Mano. The poached eggs with smoked salmon are perfect. The house-baked beans were a little under-done, but the sauce was piquant. The specials are also probably good when done as designed; however my attempt to get the green eggs and ham (pesto eggs) with soy instead of cream made them a tad odd.

The owners are aiming for excellent coffee and have a few single origin options. It's certainly one of the better coffees I've had in Clifton Hill recently.

The café is one of those rustic places where hardly any of the chairs match and every room has a different feel. The building is a classic Victorian terrace where the downstairs is the café and the upstairs is still living space. The front room is all old school tables and mis-match; the centre-room has a huge wooden table done beautifully with autumn leaves and stools around it, just right for lazing at and reading the Saturday papers or good for a large group; and then there are a few tables outside, next to a fabulous mural and poky garden with little pots and a square of lawn.

There are still a few too many dishes you'd have to alter to call the place gluten-free and the kitchen is so tiny that service can take a while, but the staff are delightful and the produce is ultra-fresh and high quality. Can I just gush about that bread again? Best gluten-free bread I've ever had at a café.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Bell Jar,
656 Smith Street
Clifton Hill, 3068

03 9482 7980

One of the sad things for a laksa lover is that the traditional version has both egg and rice noodles in it and some commercial paste bases are not gluten-free. Penang Affair can make you a delicious gluten-free version, though, and you can be sure it’s safe. The host, Peter Goy, has a gluten-intolerant daughter, so he knows what he’s doing.

Peter is a delight. He’ll visit each table for a chat, remembers the faces and stories of regulars, and he’s just plain charming.

The new menu has gluten-free items marked and even those that aren’t can often be altered (like the laksa). There’s a large vegetarian selection and I’m yet to have a dish there I didn’t like. I finish every meal with my favourite dessert, banana in coconut milk with palm sugar and sago pearls. It’s almost too sweet but it’s heavenly and warm.

Penang Affair is fully licensed with a good selection of wines. BYO is also available.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Penang Affair
325 Brunswick St
Fitzroy 3065

Ph: +61 3 9419 7594

Knowing they closed at 8pm, though, we went early and had dinner too.

A typically cosy inner-city café, the Refectory sits on Sydney Rd in Brunswick and has eclectic decorations. The prices are reasonable and the servings are generous.

At first glance, the menu isn’t coeliac-friendly: filled with focaccias and other wheat-heavy items. However, they have gluten-free bread and will do any item on the board with it. Most of the non-bread items were already gluten-free. Top that off with a comprehensive soup list (at least eight varieties, all but one of which was safe) for $6.95 for a meal-sized bowl and you’re laughing. I can only speak for my soup (split pea and ham, delicious); although the rest of our group said their items were also terrific, I have no idea how they would taste with gluten-free bread.

The pavlova was everything we expected. I noticed they also had flourless orange poppyseed cake and flourless chocolate cake as options if you’re not feeling up for the richness of a pav. Coffee was good and the atmosphere throughout was terrific.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Green Refectory,
+61 3 9387 1150

115 Sydney Rd,
Brunswick VIC

I’d e-mailed in advance with our booking mentioning that I was gluten-intolerant. When we arrived, we mentioned it to the waiter, who said that the chef had prepared a list of what I could eat on the menu. He came back and read from hand-written notes: the news sounded good. Most of what I was interested in was fine.

We ordered two of the gluten-free starters — crocodile with wild lime aioli and prawn and calamari with a bush tomato sambal — and a taster plate with two gluten-free items (smoked wallaby and mussels with a spiced mayonnaise) and two non-gluten-free items (a goat’s cheese tartlet and kangaroo chorizo).

Unfortunately, when they arrived, I was surprised to see the crocodile and the prawn and calamari all looked like they had flour or batter on them. I asked the waiter and he confirmed my suspicion. “I thought they were gluten-free,” I said. “Ah,” said he, “They can be made gluten-free. I didn’t understand you wanted it all like that.” We were a little frustrated, as we thought we’d made it clear we were sharing everything, but he offered to bring me a small, free sampler of both the dishes I was missing out on.

When they came, they were plain fried crocodile and plain steamed calamari with the dipping sauces. It looked like the spiced crumbing would have made the dishes unbelievably good, but as it was, the calamari and sambal was tender and scrumptious without it. The crocodile was a little bland, and could have used a dukkah dusting or some other spice mix without the flour.

We made ourselves much clearer with the mains: everything to be gluten-free. Not a problem. We had fantail of emu with berry sauce and a roast vegetable stack, duo of wallaby and kangaroo with a [sauce], barramundi with a lemon myrtle cream sauce and duck risotto with muntries and mushrooms. Every one of them was divine. All but the risotto was served with a sweet potato mash spiced with a native spice and served with some interesting native garnish. One, the saltbush, was intriguing and tasty, while another, the rosella leaves, were extremely hot.

Dessert was a little trickier. One couldn’t be made gluten-free, the sticky date pudding with wattleseed butterscotch sauce but my partner couldn’t resist. We ordered three others that were easily made gluten-free: white chocolate mousse with native pepper served with Davidson plum coulis (usually in a pastry basket but easily served in a ramekin), a lemon myrtle bavarois also with Davidson plum coulis, usually served with shortbread, easily omitted, and a chocolate and ryeberry icecream (and ryeberry bears no relation to rye at all, so it was fine). Again, everything was delightful: subtle and complex and unusual.

The price tag for four, including drinks and after-dinner coffees, was around the $250 mark, not bad considering the quality of the food. And, after a false start, the staff got the gluten-free issue and were very accommodating. My initial fear that making everything gluten-free would mean making it bland was not realised.

Certainly not an every day place, but great for a special occasion or for a visiting tourist looking for a treat.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Tjanabi Restaurant
(03) 9662 1225

Shp 3a/ 2 Flinders St
Melbourne VIC 3000

Gurkha’s Brasserie is one the Gurkha’s growing chain, although it’s not a fast food restaurant. We sat at the front on those knee cushions you sometimes find in Thai restaurants. The waiter brought a basket of pappadums which we ascertained were chickpea flour.

Nothing on the menu was marked gluten-free but the waiter was very helpful. Following our usual pattern, we ordered the most unusual things we could find on the menu: the goat curry and the crab curry. They were utterly delicious. The crab was served with a silver tool for cracking the legs, but the shell was so soft we didn’t need it. Thankfully, we were also given a bowl of water to clean our fingers.

We had saffron rice and yoghurt raita as sides. The raita was unusual, in that it had onion, apple and tomato as well as the usual cucumber you’d find in an Indian restaurant. It worked surprisingly well with the goat.

My partner had a “Nepalese tea” (very much like chai) and I had mango lassi. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to stay for dessert.

The total for the night was $51 — where else can you get a crab dish this good for only $16.50? We will definitely be returning. Gurkha’s reputation is well deserved.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Gurkha’s Brasserie
190 -192 Chapel St
Prahran VIC 3181

However, I had a serious craving for prawn dumplings (and I know those are in rice noodles!), so armed with my Dim Sum pictorial guide that I picked up on a recent jaunt to the States, I ventured out to Dragon Boat Palace. Each page of my book had a photo of a dish, its name in Chinese characters and English, and a list of typical ingredients.

We settled in an ordered some fairly straightforward things to start with, mostly seafood dumplings in rice flour wrappings. The scallop and greens dumpling was probably the most exquisite although the mixed mushroom one comes a close second.

The hardest thing to communicate to the waiters was that I couldn’t have anything with soy sauce — because of the wheat content. We didn’t want them to misinterpret it as a soy allergy — I love my bean curd, and in fact I really wanted to have bean curd skin with vegetables, although we didn’t see it.

We managed to get an undertaking that the roast duck did not have soy sauce on it. That was pretty delicious. I’d check when you go, though, as recipes may change from day to day.

I needed to use the book twice. Once to decide I couldn’t have a dish when the waiter couldn’t tell me what was in it and once to point at the word ‘wheat’. I’d already used it at home to work out that my old favourite, sesame balls with red bean paste, were indeed made with rice flour although it’s hard to tell: the texture is very much like white bread at times.

Of course, the proof is in the days following, and I had no ill effects from my experience. However, with no gluten-free awareness obvious in the staff, I knew I was taking my digestion into my own hands.

Yum cha remains delicious but risky. What’s life without the occasional skerrick of danger, right? [Not recommended for the seriously allergic or for pregnant coeliacs!]

Dragon Boat Palace
149 Lonsdale Street
Melbourne, Australia

+61 3 9639 0888

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Jan’s overhaul included introducing organic fair trade Jasper’s coffee, organic foods where possible, free-range eggs and, delightfully, an awareness of gluten-free cooking. At first, it was just gluten-free toast but the kitchen now ensures most flours used in items like the corn and zucchini fritters (served with slow-roasted tomatoes, bacon and avocado salsa) are gluten-free too. The gluten-free bread is the thick white loaf from local bakery Silly Yaks, so it works brilliantly when used in such dishes as French toast with poached spiced pears (or the special variation, caramelised French toast with sweetened ricotta and poached berries).

Unfortunately, recently it’s been harder to guarantee gluten-free items are available and specials are less likely to be gluten-free than they used to be. We’ve downgraded the café to three stars as a result.

As a bonus, the coffee is also excellent, thanks to the efforts of barista Carly, whose latte art includes mini-Mona Lisas you have to see to believe.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Café Quince,

43 -45 Spensley St, Clifton Hill 3068

Melbourne, Australia

+61 3 9482 4180

The menu has a ton of gluten-free food, all labelled clearly with a [GF] next to appropriate items. Options include gluten-free muffins if you’re only feeling peckish to the unbelievably delicious and spicy seafood jumbalaya (also available vegan) to the slightly odd beetroot chocolate cake. Prices are reasonable and the atmosphere is good.

Our only complaint was the coffee — I ordered decaf and it came weak as dishwater — and the service — when I complained about the coffee, I was told that decaf is weak. Not true. The waiter did take the coffee away and come back with a stronger one, which tasted strong, bitter and stale.

Ignore that, though, and the place is terrific.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Gluttony,
278 Smith St, Collingwood 3066
Melbourne, Australia
+61 3 9416 0336