Wham Bam Thank You "Plan"

Last weekend we took our niece into The City to see the tree at Rockerfeller Center.  Since we moved to PA we don't frequent NYC as often as we used to, and aren't up-to-date with local hot spots and eateries. So what do you do if you follow a Gluten Free lifestyle and need to eat out in an unfamiliar area?

Prepare, Locate, And Nourish 

(yes, I just came up with that)

Before we even looked up train schedules, we scoured the internet for gluten free and GF friendly restaurants, around the Mid-Town area.

Our tools:
Yelp, Menu Pages, and a little known gem of an app: "Find Me Gluten Free"

We narrowed the choices down to a few restaurants, but left the final decision making till the day of, since we weren't quite sure what time we would all want to eat and where we would be when the hunger pangs struck.

On the day of trip we wound up at St Patrick's Cathedral when we decided that it was time to stuff our faces. I could have panicked, but thanks to our PLANing we were able to quickly decide upon a Gluten Free restaurant nearby.

Find Me Gluten Free led us to Lili's 57 (conveniently located on W 57th street in Manhattan.) They had a separate gluten free menu and were knowledgeable about Gluten Free practices.
We ordered the GF Pork Dumplings, the GF Chicken/Shrimp Pad Thai and the GF Cranberry Teriyaki Grilled Chicken.

GF Cranberry Teriyaki Grilled Chicken w/ Brown Rice

Mom and Dad ordered the regular Pad Thai dish and after tasting our GF version proclaimed that it was hard to tell the difference. Everyone loved the GF Dumplings, especially our niece. The hardest part of our dining experience was reminding my brother-in-law to use separate utensils when tasting our GF food as to not cross-contaminate.

We highly recommend both the Find Me Gluten Free app and Lili's 57.