What happens in Vegas...will get you glutened.

I was in Vegas last weekend for a work conference. I was rather excited. I have been to Vegas before and thought it was great fun. This was my first trip since I have known I was gluten intolerant. Surprisingly it is not the same when you can't have wheat. Mostly it is the fact that food there seems to be designed to kill me.

At the hotel - Continental Breakfast = bagels, toast, cereal (of course no Rice Chex), a mystery pattie of egg, sausage and potato?, fruit and yogurt. Great. That means I get fruit and yogurt, which combined on an empty stomach send me to the bathroom almost as much as the bagel would.

At the convention center/casino - Buffet = $20 for a all you can eat surprise killer. Well, you can't see what they have to offer without paying, you can't trust someone hasn't used the same scoop for the macaroni salad as they did for the fruit salad, and you can't ask the waiter if there is gluten in every random thing because there are no waiters. It is a cross contamination mine field that I wasn't prepared to get into. Thus, as others went to the buffet, I wandered around the casino looking at the pretty lights. Eating on a regular basis can't be THAT important. Can it?

At the restaurant - Strip = Chain restaurants reign supreme. The problem with a chain restaurant being they are notoriously un-gluten free. Where are the little middle eastern places or slightly granola cafes that cater to my kind? We went to The Cheesecake Factory. They were very nice and all but the only thing they said I could eat was the Chicken Medallions. There are like 50 pages to their menu and all I could have was the Chicken Medallions though I couldn't have the balsamic vinaigrette on it. Why some balsamic vinegar has gluten, I will never know. Even the flourless Godiva Cheesecake was off the menu. It is flourless but it still has gluten. It's like KFC putting flour on the grilled chicken. Who is teaching these people to cook? Does food really taste so horrible if there is no gluten in it?

The 2 glorious things about Vegas though were 1. Trader Joe's and 2. In-in-Out Burger. I made the people I drove down with stop at both on our way out of town.

At Trader Joe's I got virtually everything they carry that is gluten free and not refrigerated. Though I was tempted to just try to bring back some crustless quiche. I don't think there is anything there that I can't get somewhere else but the stuff there is so cheap. I got 3 paper bags full of gluten free products from chips to pasta (like 7 bags) and it only cost me $50. That is a miracle in my book.

In-n-Out is a worry free cross contamination zone. The only thing is the buns and they heat them on a separate grill than the meat and no worries about fry oil that has had chicken strips in it because they don't sell chicken strips. It is great and their lettuce that they wrap the burgers in is so fresh and crisp and tasty and ohh, it was glorious. Just a little while longer and we will have our own In-n-Out in Utah. 3 in fact. If there were only a Trader Joe's in the works then life could be complete.

So, in the end I realise that though Sin City is not for me, well staying there over night isn't anyway, passing through during regular shopping hours around lunch might be ok.