A week into our trip and I certainly haven’t starved yet! The keys to successful gluten free eating are research and always having a plan B.  It does spoil most of the spontaneity that non-coeliacs routinely enjoy but c’est la vie!

As Deb blogged, the flight to Paris took around 30 hours.  The only food during this time would be airline food so we ensured that the gluten free (gf) notation was definitely on my booking.  This does not, of course, guarantee gf meals so I also carried in my hand luggage enough food to survive the “day” if the airline food was a no show.  Plan B meant eating before the flight (which left after 10pm) so I had already eaten dinner, and I carried a serve of gf breakfast mix, a slice of my homemade fruit and nut slice plus a variety of small snacks.

Happily I did not have to touch my own snack food and had actually added some rice cakes to the supply by the time we landed in Paris.  Full points to Emirates this time, with my meals delivered to my seat before anyone else’s (in economy anyway).  The first two meals were probably sourced from Melbourne so no great taste surprises there.  A reasonably good meal (as economy class airline meals go).  Some passengers took up the option of a “midnight snack” (around 4 in the morning by my reckoning) which did not seem to have a gf option.  But I was already full from my two dinners so had no problem with missing this.

The second leg from Dubai to Paris was similar although I felt the variety of each meal starting to fall back to the standard rice cake/hot dish/salad/fruit formula.  But there was a definite decrease in “quality” (not service) on this leg as the plane had more passengers and less toilets than the long haul from Melbourne to Dubai.

We arrived in Paris late afternoon so dinner was the first issue.  We already knew that small local supermarkets would be common in Paris and they were often open till 10pm (but not on Sundays!)  My research was basically a lot of googling before leaving home.  The tools I used were Google search and Google Translate – not a perfect translator but pretty amazing when you see it in action.  The one error I made was not realising the extent to which your location (Melbourne) affects google results.  The search engine identifies where you are searching from and prioritises results (in this case Australian and English language sites).  When I used Google in Paris I got a lot of results missed by my Australian searches (I should have used Google France (.fr not .au) to really get the results I wanted.  Of course to use Google France you will need to learn a smattering of French to make any sense of it.  It will be a lot harder in Turkey!

So plan A was to cook our own meals using the facilities of our pre-arranged apartment.  This had the added advantages of saving some money and allowing us to eat quite late after early evening visits to museums such as the Louvre (lesser crowds when the day tourists have gone home).

The drawback with this was having to learn to read product ingredients on labels in French.  Fortunately the European rules are similar to home (Australia+New Zealand) so we just had to be able to recognise the usual terms (“may contain traces…”) and the names of the evil ingredients (“farine de ble” etc).   We looked for the magic ”sans gluten” and did find it occasionally, even on some home brand items.  The main problems were the usual; squinting to read 4-point fonts and having no one supermarket that had everything we wanted.  As a lot of Parisians live in the city there are a lot of little supermarches everywhere and the prices aren’t bumped up like at convenience stores at home.  If we were unsure of our French, we just used the google translator to check the ingredients again when we got back to our apartment.  It was quite educational too!

So I had breakfast (cereal brought from home) and dinner (sourced daily from the local shops) covered.  That left lunch.  The lunch Plan A was to eat at Paris cafes that were gf friendly.  Naturally I always carried snacks for when Plan A did not work (e.g. when we visited Versailles Palaces for the day).

I found a total of 3 gf eateries in Paris and we tried them all.  I won’t give details of opening hours etc as these change and eateries everywhere also often close down or start up so the details date quickly.  I recommend you do your own research for addresses and hours.  It is easy to get around Paris on the underground (Metropolitan) but be aware that at busy times/days many small cafes require bookings even for a quick lunch (we missed out once because of this and had to settle for some takeaway).

The three places we went to were all very small (as is typical of many Paris cafes) and very busy so we didn’t really get to know their menus very well.  I liked them all, some more than others but then I like any food that’s gf!  Because we were only in Paris for 5 days we did not need to try other establishments that are listed as having gf options and stuck to these three all-gf menu places (cakes included – yummy!)

Noglu – A busy lunch spot in an arcade in a crowded shopping district.  We tried the duck (canard) plus a Tart du Citron (for me) and a Chocolat Brownie for Deb. Prices were a little higher than at other places.

Helmut Newcake – A little more off the beaten track with a nice quiet room at the back for weary tourists or families.  As well as lunch dishes such as quiche or pasta, they have a modest choice of cakes also available to take away, my favourite being the Baba au Rhum (Rum baba).

Biosphere Café – An organic café but all items are also gf.  Our favourite lunch of the week was the gallettes (savoury buckwheat pancakes/crepes).  Deb even had a sweet one for dessert whilst I had a Tirasmisu cake.

All the places we visited had staff that spoke at least a little English so we did not need to rely on our dodgy French.  In fact this has applied everywhere we have been so far in Paris.  Good thing we have done so much walking or else the waistlines would be expanding exponentially so far.

Ian