During the many years that I have been a chef there have been constant and unchanging challenges with the day to day operations in the kitchen.  Between making sure that your cooks show up on time for their shift, worrying that the special fish you are having flown has arrived, or how busy or slow the night might be, there numerous trials to be faced.

A growing challenge we have encountered is the many varieties of food modifications that exist in preparing the food to satisfy our customers' dietary needs.  There are many food allergies to accomodate, and both Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises and Wildfire have established a very strict set of rules to insure that we keep the food that we serve to our allergic customers safe for them to eat.  Whether it's an allergy to nuts, garlic, shellfish, etc., a pink slip is filled out with all the pertinent information and then submitted to the kitchen so they know how to prepare the food that is ordered.

Wildfire became aware of celiac disease about 5 years ago when we had numerous guests asking for gluten free items.  At the time, an old college friend of my business partner, Howard Katz, President of Wildfire, told him that her daughter had celiac disease and revealed how much this affected their ability to go out to dinner as a family.  In response to both of these events, we created a gluten free menu.  We wanted to be able to serve gluten free food to guests who are looking for a normal dining experience without the fear of becoming ill.  In order to create the menu, we consulted Howard's college friend and did extensive research on all the recipes we use and the labels of every product we bring in.  We took our regular menu items and identified the items that could be modified to be gluten free.  The staff, from servers to cooks, have all been trained on how to handle the gluten free menu.  As we worked with the menu, we began to identify more and more items that were gluten free and even added a gluten free hamburger bun.  The gluten free menu can be viewed by location by clicking here.

Ruth Hayden, Director of Training for Wildfire, has been highly involved in helping to create our gluten free menu.  "Over the years, I have gotten a lot of positive feedback on the gluten free menu.  I probably get at least one email a week from a guest thanking us for having this menu.  I think it is such an important part of our restaurant.  It allows people to feel safe eating at Wildfire."   

We will be introducing our new gluten free pizza at all locations in the next couple of weeks.  The ingredients consist of Tom Sawyer gluten free flour, olive oil, milk, yeast, and a few others.  It will be rolled out with a special rolling pin, baked in our wood burning oven, all the while adhering to practices to prevent cross-contamination.  Personally, I enjoy this crust as much as our wheat crust.

From the wood-burning oven,