Review: Find Me Gluten Free

  When you have food allergies or intolerances, traveling can be really tricky! That's one of the reasons I love cruising, but even then, you encounter strange lands, like *Miami* where you have to forage for food outside of the main dining room. When you have Celiac Disease, or you're even just intolerant to gluten, getting exposed while on vacation can put a rather unpleasant spin on your experience. Enter Find Me Gluten Free. This fabulous, crowd-sourced site and app are a great place to start when trying to hunt down that elusive gluten free meal in a new town, or even the one you live in! 

 The app is a really handy tool to include on your phone and can be found in your product's app store for free. I, however, typically like to do my searching ahead of time on the computer, but unfortunately the web version no longer includes a map for free, so I use the app for that part. I like to start by searching for everything and then begin to narrow it down from there. It's easier than if you entered "Vietnamese" and nothing showed up and then you entered "Indian" and so on. So, for my upcoming trip with my son, I typed in "Miami, FL." The list was extensive, so wanting to narrow it down, I clicked on "Dedicated GF Places." I was shocked by how many there were! I expected one or two, but they listed 16 places where the entire facility was reported to be gluten free! I'm only likely to eat a couple of meals in Miami, so I needed to narrow that down! I knew that on our return day we would be mainly in the area served by the Miami MetroMover, so I lined up the MetroMover map with the search map from the app:

 Well, that narrowed it down to two really, and they are all the way down in Brickell which I'm not sure we'll spend much time in, so I opened the map back up to everywhere with gluten free reviews and got this instead:

 Next, I began checking out the areas I knew we'd be spending time in , like Bayside Marketplace and RiverWalk. One thing to note is that just because there are reviews posted, doesn't mean they are good reviews. Like this place in Bayside:

 Just like with any review site, you have to take things with a grain of salt, but when there's only one review and only one star, I'm probably not going to chance my only Miami lunch on it! Good thing there's lots of other options. I also came across a few reviews of the Tacology that I had considered for our lunch that made me second guess that idea! After clicking around a bit, I realized that my initial search was probably dead-on with looking for dedicated GF facilities and the best option I found was TAP 100% Gluten-Free Sandwiches and Acai Bowls in Brickell:

 With 39 ratings and five stars, this dedicated GF restaurant seems like my best choice! Now to find something to eat on our first night in Miami, before our cruise. This was a little trickier as when I loaded up the Find Me GF map for the area around our hotel, they only listed two walkable options, and both had poor reviews.

 That huge cluster of reviews in the middle? Yeah, that's the airport. And nothing says we can't eat at the airport before we leave, but if we check bags, I don't want to leave them sitting at baggage claim while we have dinner. So, on the chance we don't check bags, I looked over the airport options and was pleased to find that the Chili's had four and a half stars. I feel pretty comfortable ordering at a place like this and it's the least expensive option at only one $. Their rating goes up to $$$$ I believe. But, like I said, if we check a bag this isn't a great option, so I needed to find something local. What to do? I loaded up my trusty Google Maps to check out what all the restaurants in the area were.

 So, again, not a lot of options. Miranda had poor reviews and La Palapa is actually a 3.6 mile one-way walk because of how you have to navigate the water and the freeway. That left Pollo Tropical. Find me GF hadn't mentioned it on their search, so I looked for the restaurant by name:

 While this location hadn't been reviewed, it seems this is a chain store that has locations all over Miami. The other locations had each received one good rating, and no bad ones, so that is helpful! It's kind of funny, as I read the reviews they mentioned that the staff doesn't seem to know what a gluten allergy is and you have to tell them you're allergic to bread! That said, it seems like a good, cheap option, and my son that I'm travelling with (well all my sons actually) love Latin food so this seems like it will be our go-to!

Here's the Thing: With both airport and non-airport locations identified, I feel confident in being able to grab food on our first night in Miami without the hungry, exhausted, brain-fogged travel brain trying to figure it out in the moment. I also have a solid option for our final tour day in Miami if I need it, but I'll probably hunt around the food trucks first to see if there's anything that looks safe. Find Me GF is not a complete, perfect package, but it is a useful tool that I highly recommend for doing your research and finding a safe place to eat. If you travel a lot and/or have a stronger sensitivity to gluten than I do (say if you're Celiac) it might be worth the $25/yr premium upgrade to get more Celiac friendly info and extra search options. It can help you find stuff nearby where you live as well!