flourchylde bakery, Novato: stay away!

[Guest guest]

On our way to the coast this weekend, I found FlourChylde listed on google maps as a good place to go for gluten free food. Well... this is exactly the kind of place to AVOID if you, like me, really can't consume any amount of gluten. There were very many delicious looking gluten free treats in the display case, but they were placed right next to -- and often actually touching - treats made with wheat flour. There were crumbs everywhere in the case. When I asked the woman working there why the gluten and gluten free items were placed side by side like that, she said that she had a separate tong to pick up each -- as if somehow that made the cross contamination issues staring us in the face vanish! She clearly didn't understand that having the items next to each other (and crumbs everywhere) made it impossible for someone like me to eat the "gluten free" item. When I asked how the gluten free treats were kept gluten free during the baking process, she said she didn't know and thought they probably weren't. Also, when I asked if the salad dressings were gluten free, she and the other woman working there looked at each other and shrugged. "I think so," one said. "I don't know why they wouldn't be." Not a very satisfying answer. (On top of all this, they had many sandwiches but not one was available on gluten free bread, which I found very odd considering they are a bakery and could make their own... Though with the apparent sloppiness of the enterprise, I wouldn't have ordered a sandwich anyway...)

I don't understand why a bakery bothers to make gluten free items in what appears to be a very sloppy way, unless they have a large clientele of people opting out of eating gluten due to reasons that are not medical... I think it's very weird. And the workers' lack of understanding about cross contamination and anything about the baking process itself and their inability to tell me if the salad dressing was gluten free suggests very strongly that this bakery should be avoided.

I plan to contact the owner to ask about cross contamination issues and to let her/him know what a person who really needs to eat gluten free needs, but meanwhile I thought I would warn away anyone from eating there or eating something from there before these concerns are addressed... (My advice if you're hungry in Novato: head down the street from the bakery to Whole Foods, instead...)

Sent from my tin can and string. Please excuse mumbling and static.