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WTF is… Gluten-free?

Chef Viraf Patel, partner at Café Zoe, on what gluten is, what food to avoid and what to substitute it with

WTF is... Gluten-free?

What exactly is gluten and is it bad for you? 

Gluten is basically a protein that is found in grains (mainly wheat, barley, oats and rye). It’s what holds the grain together and gives it its structure and form, even in cooking. For instance, in the making of bread, it’s the gluten that allows for the stretching and rising of the dough, giving the bread an airy texture.
Gluten is by itself not bad, but some people can’t digest it.

What are the severe reactions people can have to gluten?

There are varying degrees of reactions, ranging from mere gluten-intolerance to the far more severe celiac disease. For those who are intolerant, symptoms are mostly just bloating and indigestion. But for someone with celiac, even a small amount of gluten can attack the lining of the small intestine, causing inflammation and acute pain.

Why do you suppose instances of gluten-intolerance have increased over the past five years? We never even heard of it in India while growing up. 

To a great extent, it has become a fad, a ‘cool’ thing to say. While a lot of people genuinely suffer from gluten-intolerance, there many people who have actually mistaken it for a measure to lose weight and eat healthy. To stay fit, one must eat everything in appropriate proportions, instead of eating one type of food and eliminating others. Another contributor may be packaged food and its use in everyday consumption—we can never know every detail of what’s in them.

What kind of food does Cafe Zoe offer those who are on a gluten-free diet?

We serve gluten-free bread that one can choose to have as a sandwich or a tartine, along with risottos and quinoa dishes that we keep changing. A few of our seafood and meat mains are served with organic black rice (also available as a side order). We don’t really get a lot of customers on a gluten-free diet, but we do take pains to train our staff on the illness, the effects, the ingredients, and keep separate cooking vessels to use in extreme cases of intolerance.

Are there ingredients that you would recommend for those that are gluten-intolerant? 

Various kinds of rice, corn, soy and soy products, potatoes.


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