Happy New Year! If I have one wish for everyone reading this newsletter, it’s that 2025 will be a happy and healthy year for you and those you love. While I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions — I’d like to think that healthy habits can be picked up at any time of the year — I do think that the first days of the new year offer a great opportunity to take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re going.

I’m thrilled to say that 2024 was a terrific year for the Gluten-Free Guidebook. Hundreds of new readers joined this community, and I’m grateful to have you come aboard. On a personal note, I had the opportunity to travel a lot this year — always one of my favorite things. Here’s a video recap, which is probably going to make you veryhungry. It features the four cities where I spent the most time this year: London, New York, Toronto, and Paris. Eagle-eyed viewers will spot a few restaurants I haven’t written about yet:

The most popular story of the year was “What I Wish I’d Known When I Was Diagnosed with Celiac Disease.” While this story is normally only available to paid subscribers, I’m unlocking it for the next week so that anyone can read it.

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Happy holidays, everyone! I hope you’ve been enjoying time with family and friends — and, if you’ve been traveling, you haven’t been badly impacted by the cold, snowy weather that’s taken over a sizable chunk of North America. (I’m in Toronto right now and, baby, it’s cold outside.)

I love this time of year for plenty of reasons, including all the Best of the Year lists that pop up in December. It’s also the perfect time to take stock of what was great about the past 12 months. Here’s my personal list of favorite gluten-free spots that I visited in 2024. (If you you’re looking for great spots in Barcelona, Athens, and Montreal, check out last year’s list. I stand by all of those recommendations!)

Favorite Meal of the Year: Niche, London. Located near Sadler’s Wells Theatre, the restaurant’s tagline is “gluten-free but you wouldn’t know it.” No false advertising here! Niche was the first restaurant in London to be certified a 100% gluten-free restaurant by Coeliac UK. It is also nut-free and sesame-free, and many of the dishes are dairy-free or vegan. My meal started with the bread selection, which included a toasted sourdough, a garlic-and-rosemary focaccia, and a red onion and chili flatbread, all served with a sun-dried tomato spread, plus olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Next up was my appetizer: parmesan-and-cheddar doughnuts served with a tomato sauce. Plus a side of beer-battered onion rings. My main course was duck breast in a rich Madeira sauce with a creamy celeriac mash and steamed bok choy. It was decadent and delicious and the service was lovely. 

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There’s always a new trend coming down the line. Some of them are terrific (ooh, leopard print is back!) and others wear out their welcome pretty fast (bye, barrel-leg jeans). But trends aren’t limited to fashion. Restaurants are just as likely to follow them, and there’s one I’ve seen on the rise this year: eateries with “gluten friendly” menus.

Not only is the name kind of dumb (technically, something “gluten friendly” would be pro-gluten, the way a “kid friendly” meal is one intended for kids), but it’s also devoid of legal meaning. That’s the big difference between gluten free and gluten friendly. In the US, Canada, and much of Europe, “gluten free” has a distinct legal meaning: it guarantees a level of gluten content that is below 20 ppm (parts per million). That’s the level of gluten contamination that health regulatory bodies in many countries have established as a safe threshold for people with celiac disease.

Since gluten friendly has no legal definition, it means whatever a restaurant wants it to mean. Are there traces of gluten? Cross-contamination issues? Maybe! Only the restaurant in questions knows, and they’re not making any guarantees. There’s a restaurant in my neighborhood that offers gluten-friendly items on the menu, but also has fine print that reads “These items are not suitable for celiacs.” At least they’re being honest.

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A few weeks ago, I published “An Art Lover’s Walking Tour of New York City” and it received a tremendous response. Since the weather is — oddly — even better now than it was then, I wanted to offer another walking tour for everyone spending time in Manhattan over Thanksgiving or for the holidays in December. This time, we explore Central Park, which is a joy to walk through at any time of the year.

Central Park is often referred to as New York’s backyard, because it’s where people walk, congregate, picnic, play frisbee, and commune with nature, among other pastimes. It’s also credited with keeping the city sane, but that seems like a stretch. Designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux in the 1850s, Central Park is 2.5 miles long (extending from 59th Street to 110th Street) and a half-mile wide (from Fifth Avenue to Central Park West). Inside those borders is a world far away from the rest of the island of Manhattan.

This walking tour should take two hours — but it will be significantly longer if you want to explore the Metropolitan Museum of Art or if you decide to go rowing on Central Park Lake. You’ll need comfortable walking shoes — exploring the park can involve dodging cyclists, joggers, and baby strollers. You can take this tour any day of the week, but avoid Wednesdays if you want to see the Met (it’s closed that day) and keep in mind that weekends are extra-busy. There are walking directions in the text below, but click here for the Google Map I created. Using it will make it easier to follow the tour, and to spot other attractions you might want to make a detour for.

Are you ready? Let’s get going!

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How is it February already? I don’t know where January went, but I can tell you it was filled with some interesting gluten-free stories. Because these news items don’t fit into my regular posts, I love to do a roundup every so often. Here’s what caught my attention recently:

“20 Surprising Foods That Contain Gluten.” I’m always grateful when a mainstream magazine like Health deals with this subject. This article by registered dietitian Johna Burdeos covers plenty of territory that gluten-intolerant people already know (everyone reading this is aware that soy sauce contains wheat, right?), and some that you may not (couscous is frequently mistaken for rice, but it’s made from wheat).

“Best Gluten-Free Meal Delivery Services of 2024.” I’m a New Yorker so I’m veryfamiliar with the concept of ordering takeout, but I have to admit that I’ve never used a meal-delivery service. For anyone who does, this article by Tori Martinet in U.S. News & World Report should be an interesting read, complete with information about pricing, plus pros and cons for each service.

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I’ve mentioned before that my nieces have celiac disease, so whenever I see them, we have a gluten-free extravaganza. I don’t mean that we spend all our time eating — on my latest visit, they took me to their favorite rock-climbing gym! — but treats are definitely on the agenda. While I usually bring cupcakes from Erin McKenna’s bakery in New York, that doesn’t mean we don’t explore the options in Massachusetts, where they live. On my most recent visit, that meant discovering Jennifer Lee’s together…

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There are so many different reasons to fall in love with a place. I’m not a sun-and-sand type, so I didn’t expect Miami Beach to work its charms on me. Generally speaking, if I visit a sunny, sandy spot, it’s because there are ancient temples or ruins nearby. But Miami Beach lured me in with eye-catching Art Deco architecture and truly fabulous gluten-free food.

Before I talk about the food, let me say a word about the architecture. The Miami Beach Architectural District is located in South Beach, and it’s chock-full of glamorous buildings that were constructed during the 1930s and early 1940s. (Sadly, a hurricane in the 1920s destroyed a lot of real estate, which allowed the rebuild to take place.) The local style is known as Streamline Moderne, which was inspired by aerodynamic design with its long, sinuous lines. It’s a style that was inherently optimistic, blended with a belief that life would get better.

The temptation in Miami Beach is to head straight for the beach, but it’s worth taking the time to stroll along Ocean Drive and the surrounding streets. Most of the Art Deco buildings are well preserved and highly photogenic.

And then there’s the food. So much great gluten-free food! A few of my favorites from the trip…

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Everyone who eats gluten-free has something they miss about their pre-diagnosis diet. For me, what I miss most is being able to freely share and sample all the dishes on the table. One of the great pleasures of going out to dinner used to be tasting things I hadn’t ordered. Growing up in Toronto, there were neighborhoods like Greektown on the Danforth and Chinatown on Spadina where dishes were mostly designed for sharing. For years, that was my default mode when dining out.

But it’s different when you have celiac disease, or when you’re managing a food allergy or intolerance. While I’m grateful for all of the restaurants that are expanding their range to accommodate people on special diets, it’s unusual for me to go out with a group and be able to share much of what’s on the table. There’s normally food I can’t eat and a risk of cross-contamination from utensils used in more than one dish.

This is a long way of explaining why one dinner I had last week brought me no end of joy. My husband and I had family visiting from out of town, and there were eight of us going out to dinner together. We needed a place that could accommodate both gluten-free and vegetarian, and we ended up at a restaurant that we’d never dined at before—even though we’ve eaten food from it many times.

Tigerlily Kitchen got its start during the pandemic as a ghost kitchen…

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Happy New Year! While I don’t normally make resolutions, I like to take stock of how things are going at certain times of the year, and this is one of them. That’s also true of springtime (to me, it’s part of spring cleaning) and September (the back-to-school timing always feels like a great push to start new projects). But ringing in the new year is a natural time to consider where we’ve been and where we’re going.

The Gluten-Free Guidebook is all about dining out and travel, but to do that successfully takes a certain mindset, particularly when you need to follow a special diet. Part of the trouble is that following any diet never sounds like fun. It sounds like work, or even sacrifice. One of the most important adjustments I ever made after my celiac diagnosis was that I stopped thinking about the things I couldn’t have and embraced the things I could. It’s a subtle switch, but it makes all the difference in the world. Everyone has limits (whether they know it or not), and discovering what yours are is a blessing.

In that vein, here are some ideas to reflect on as we start a new year…

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It’s that time of year again when we all get to slow down a little and take stock of the past twelve months. Personally, I enjoy the Best Of lists that crop up in December, because they remind me about places I was too busy to check out earlier, and because I love comparing notes about the things I loved. 

For me, 2023 was a great ride — and also an incredibly busy one. A personal andprofessional highlight has been bringing the Gluten-Free Guidebook back to life on Substack. I started this project in 2008 on WordPress and it thrived until the pandemic hit and travel ground to a halt. It’s been thrilling to reconnect with people who’ve been reading the blog for years and to connect with a whole new audience. Here’s to traveling together into the new year and beyond! Remember, I love to hear about your travel experiences just as much as I enjoy sharing mine.

Now for some of my favorite places from the past year…

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