Help! Visiting Venice and Rome and I have to eat gluten free

Good news—-Italian restaurants are very familiar with gluten-free needs and most restaurants have symbols on the menu designating problem ingredients such as wheat/gluten. And while Italy is famous for pizza and pasta, one can eat very well there without ever touching those. I know I do.

The Italian sauces, unlike French, are rarely thickened with flour. So most “Secondi” ( meat and fish dishes) are gluten free, as long S you avoid the fried things (which are dipped in flour or breadcrumbs). Salads, vegetables, and risotto are other options.

Italian menus are in sections: Antipasti (appetizers, sometimes including salads), Primi (pasta dishes but also risotto), Secondi (meat and fish) Cortonin(side dishes like vegetables or potatoes) and Dolci (desserts). When my husband and I dine in Italy, we chose one or 2 gluten-free Antipasto dishes, then he orders from the Primi and I choose grilled meat of fish from the Secondi. You have to specify that these should be served “insieme” (together, at the same time) or they will bring them in sequence, pasta first and then the meat. Of course you can have the antipasti dishes separately, first.

I have never tried the “gluten free” pasta or pizza. I am so used to not eating them I don’t have any interest.

Hotel breakfasts can be a problem, with lots of bread and pastries on offer, and not much else. Ut many hotels with offer gluten-free baked goods on request. These are generally packaged and not very good, so I skip that and carry instant oatmeal packets to make in the room for my breakfast. My husband also carries his own preferred cereal. In fact we usually skip hotel breakfasts unless they are automatically included in the price of the room. My husband prefers to get his morning cappuccino from a little neighborhood bar we locate ahead of time, as the hotel’s version is generally inferior.

Here is a typical menu (from a place we like) that indicated the allergens in every dish. They use numbers instead of symbols, and gluten is indicated by a “1”. Notice the “1” on every pasta dish. For seafood, it is only on the fried items.

https://www.ristorantesantrovaso.it/menu-carta/

This place had a separate dessert menu, but we rarely order that—we have our gelato in the afternoon. You can get that in a cup instead of a cone to avoid gluten (I do). And of course at a restaurant you would skip the tiramisu.

On the contrary, this is why I like breakfast buffets in Europe. To be fair, there's usually a fair amount of meat available.

Hotel breakfasts can be a problem, with lots of bread and pastries on offer, and not much else

As far as I can remember, every included hotel breakfast in Italy had gluten free products. If they weren't alrady on the buffet, there was usually a sign saying you had to ask for it.

My experience has been that, apart from the Dolomites where the cuisine is Tyrolian, hotel breakfasts in Italy do not usually include much in the way of meats and cheese. Maybe an egg, soft boiled, and yogurt. And some fruit. The cereals offered are usually cornflakes and something resembling granola, often with chocolate bits. Mostly it is bread, rolls, croissants, and an array of sweet pastries—-in line with the traditional Italian “breakfast” one can get at a little bar, taken standing up.

Of course, hotels catering mostly to American and British tourists will have a wider array of choices, including meat and cheese. Maybe we haven’t stayed at enough of those.

And if you ask for gluten-free, most of the time (again in my personal experience), everything offered is a commercial product in a package (biscuits, crackers, and flatbreads) and not very good. Not like a nice fresh croissant, for example. When I asked about this, it was explained that under EU regulations any gluten-free product must be baked in a dedicated facility that only uses gluten-free flour and other ingredients, to prevent cross-contamination. As many small towns are unable to support such a facility, the hotels buy the packaged products from a larger commercial facility located elsewhere. This was often all I could find in grocery stores as well.

Our hotel in Courmayeur on the Tour du Mont Blanc (a very nice 4-star hotel) went to far in this “cross-contamination prevention” as to set up a separate table for me, stocked with an array of the packaged gluten-free products and labeled with my name. It was a kind gesture, but I did not want any of that. At least since it was packaged they could put it out for someone else.

Thank you for all the detailed, helpful comments about eating gluten free in Italy. I will definitely use your tips! I feel better now about finding food options on my trip. I appreciate you taking the time to comment on this topic.

My son and I have celiac and have had pretty good luck traveling Europe with it. They, in general, have more GF options that I see in the USA. With that said, we don't stay places with breakfast provided because I've not seen many good options in those cases and we try to avoid buffet style foods. We eat breakfast in the room with grocery store bought GF options (the grocery stores almost all have a GF section of foods).

If you have other options for research, Find Me Gluten Free is a great app for locations with GF options and also there is a great Italy Gluten Free group on FB. For Rome a few options of restaurants are: Pizza in Trevi, New Food, Grom for gelato is a GF gelato chain in Italy, Mama Eat, La Soffita Renovatio, Celiachiamo Lab, Cimarra 4.