Not enough time in your day to prepare a delicious, healthy dinner?  No fear!  The Dinner A’Fare at Northlake creates fresh, nutritious meals and they will go out of their way to make sure gluten-free people can safely enjoy their services.  The ingredient lists are simple with minimal ingredients, so it’s easy to know whether or not your meal is ‘safe’ to eat.  The Dinner A Fare provides an economical and fresh alternative to take out for the busy family.

I contacted Carol Rice at the Northlake Dinner A Fare about six weeks ago to see if they can accommodate gluten-free customers.  Carol immediately informed me that they have gluten-free soy sauce on hand and that they want to make their meals ‘gluten-free friendly.’  I have since been in contact with Carol multiple times about various meal options, hidden gluten and even the best gluten-free flours.

So how does Dinner A Fare work?  Dinner A’Fare creates a new menu each month and you can purchase meal packages depending on the number of people you need to feed and how many meals you want.   Each month there are about 15 different options, ranging from Kung Pao Chicken to Argentinian Grilled Flank Steak with Black Bean Vinaigrette.  You pick up the meal at their Northlake or Northside Drive location and it comes in bags with instructions for how to cook the meal yourself.  This makes your food taste fresh and you get to enjoy part of the preparation process.  All of the ingredients are there; you just put it together and bring it to your table.

The folks at The Dinner A Fare, Northlake have discovered that many of their meals can easily be made gluten-free, with just a few changes.  They have also gone through all of their ingredients, looking for hidden glutens, which were found in things like beef base and some thickeners.  They’ve purchased gluten-free alternatives for those ingredients.  The Dinner A Fare at Northlake has also purchased gluten-free flour, bread crumbs and oats to keep on hand to prepare meals for gluten-free customers.  Carol is also aware of contamination, and the need to only use clean utensils and dishes when preparing gluten-free meals.  Of course there are some things on the menu, such as the calzones that will not have a gluten-free option, but most of the items on the November menu are naturally gluten-free or can be tweaked to be gluten-free.

The Dinner A Fare also created a Thanksgiving holiday package that serves eight people, comes with turkey breast and all kinds of delicious sides, including sour cream & chive mashed potatoes, sweet potato soufflé and a broccoli cheddar bake.  For the gluten-free version of the holiday package, Carol and her great staff will make a version of the stuffing using rice and the dessert will be an apple crisp using certified gluten-free oats.  Sounds delicious!

Carol nicely gave David and me one of the meals, the Steak Diane., to try last week.  Now being that I’m someone that loves to cook, I was a little skeptical about the meal and worried that it wouldn’t taste fresh or home cooked.  David and I were amazed by our meal.  The steak was so tender and the sauce was delicious.  The preparation of the meal was a breeze as the instructions were simple and easy to follow.  The Dinner A Fare provides the main dish and you can purchase sides from them, but David and I just made our own.  Mashed potatoes and roasted carrots went perfectly with the Steak Diane.  Carol went over all of the ingredients with me in the Steak Diane and she put the meal components together right in front of me so I knew exactly what was going into my food.  Check out our yummy dinner:

If you’re interested in looking into the gluten-free dinners and/or holiday meals at The Dinner A Fare in Northlake, you should contact Carol directly at the email address below.  She has worked with people with gluten allergies before and she is eager to accommodate all diners.  Feel free to ask her any questions you might have and I know that she will be happy to answer them.  She is eager to help and serve, and work with her customers to provide them with good food.  Let me know if you try any of the other meals at The Dinner A Fare.

Isn’t it nice to have more and more options in the food world?

Carol Rice: northlake@dinnerafare.com

4805 Briarcliff Road
#105
Atlanta, GA 30345
770-934-1140

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 9:24 am and is filed under Atlanta, cooking, GF product, local food, meals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.