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| Here's what happened when we tried to eat at Chipotle's |
A lot of gluten-free folks recommend Chipotle Mexican Grill when eating out because the only thing on their menu that supposedly has gluten is their flour tortillas.
These folks talk about how much they love eating at Chipotle's, how they go there all the time, and have never been glutened.
Hubby and I almost never go out to eat any more.
In our experience, it isn't worth the risk. Except for breakfast at Golden Corral and lunch or dinner at P.F. Chang's, I can count on one hand the number of times I have eaten out and "not" been glutened.
With odds like that, we gave up trying to find a suitable restaurant in our area long ago and started keeping a few gluten-free products on hand instead. We chose things that would make super-quick lunches and dinners, such as gluten-free corn dogs, frozen salmon patties, and gluten-free pizza.
When we were in Texas for the Fourth of July, 2016, visiting my kids and granddaughter, we decided to give Chipotle Mexican Grill a try.
And this is what happened . . .
What Does Chipotle Mexican Grill's Website Say About Gluten?
Since I'm fairly paranoid about eating restaurant food, and didn't want to spoil our vacation by having to spend several hours in the shower each day, my daughter-in-law checked out Chipotle's online Allergens and Special Diet chart, which confirmed the fact that their flour tortillas are the only issue there.
According to the top of the page:
"No matter what your unique dietary needs are, Chipotle has options for you."
Great. We have a Chipotle's Mexican Grill about 20 minutes from the apartment we're renting, so I was excited to learn that we might actually have someplace safe that we can eat at once in a while.
Below the chart, it says:
"Individual foods may come in contact with one another during preparation, which is not reflected on this chart. Although we do not use eggs, mustard, peanuts, tree nuts, sesame, shellfish, or fish as ingredients in our food, Chipotle cannot guarantee the complete absence of these allergens in its restaurants."
Notice that the cautionary statement didn't refer to wheat or gluten. Their specific comments on gluten were placed in a cautionary statement all by itself:
"If you avoid gluten, don't eat our flour tortillas. If you are highly sensitive to gluten and would like us to change our gloves, just let us know at the start of your order. You should be aware items containing corn, including corn tortillas (chips, soft corn, and crispy corn tortillas) and corn salsa, may have a small amount of gluten from potentially comingling with gluten-containing grains in the field."
So their only recommendation is to not eat the flour tortillas and ask the person who's serving you to change their gloves.
The warning about corn potentially being contaminated in the field made it sound like they knew about the potential dangers of cross-contamination.
Turns out that was a red herring.
What Happened at Our First Visit to Chipotle Mexican Grill?
Despite the assurances that their allergy page was crafted to give, I was still feeling a bit timid, so I wasn't really thinking very clearly.
However, when my daughter-in-law informed the person at the beginning of the line that hubby and I were extra-sensitive to gluten, they instantly turned to the first person in their assembly line and told her to change her gloves.
The girl looked shocked and confused.
That should have been a big red flag for me, but since the restaurant wasn't supposed to have anything I needed to watch out for, other than the flour tortillas, I simply explained to the girl as best I could that we were extremely sensitive to gluten and needed her to change her gloves before she prepared our meals.
She did change her gloves, but didn't wash her hands before putting on the new pair. I didn't think to ask her to do that, since hubby and I almost never eat out, and we have a 100 percent gluten-free home.
Chipotle features a small variety of tacos, burritos, and salads. You can also order something called a burrito bowl. That's basically anything you might want to put inside a burrito, but it's served in a bowl instead. You can also have a taco salad.
We decided to get the burrito bowl with corn tortillas on the side.
As the girl moved down the line, serving us completely herself, I simply ordered what I wanted to go on top of the lime-cilantro rice. Hubby did the same.
At the end of the line, we told her that we wanted corn tortillas with our meal and needed her to take care of that for us herself. That way, there wouldn't be any problems, since her gloves were clean. Hubby repeated what I had said, and she nodded in agreement.
But that's not what happened.
After leaving our meal at the cash register, she moved back into her position, picked up a flour tortilla that was handed to her by the person running the tortilla warmer and began to roll it with the gluten-free gloves on. The flour tortilla had contaminated her gloves.
While this was going on, I also watched as another girl, who was preparing a flour-tortilla burrito for someone else, reach her flour-contaminated gloves into the grated cheese.
At that point, I freaked out.
My sister-in-law demanded to see the manager, who quickly came out and did her best to rectify the situation. She had the girl who fixed our food change her gloves again, and the manager personally warmed up our corn tortillas for us.
By this time, I realized that there was only going to be so much we could do to avoid gluten over the course of our vacation, and decided to calm down and just make the best of things.
Since I somehow ended up with hubby's burrito bowl instead of my own -- his had brown rice -- I only ate half of the meal, and threw the rest away.
Brown rice always gives me a belly ache.
What I Learned from that First Chipotle Experience
Did I get glutened from the cheese?
You betcha.
I had to take a couple of Imodium tablets to slow down the thyroid that went into hyper-drive and make the intestinal issues less troublesome. At that time, I vowed to do a better job of thinking ahead.
When we go to Golden Corral, an all-you-can-eat buffet, I always choose dishes that won't ordinarily be touched by gloved hands, such as grilled steak and frozen whole-kernel corn. Occasionally, I'd eat a baked sweet potato and be okay.
Breakfast is also simple:
- scrambled eggs with cheese sauce
- bacon, ham, baby sausage links
- canned fruit
I also should have stood back for a few minutes and watched how that particular Chipotle handled the line. It would have helped me to avoid the cheese.
Our Second Visit to Chipotle Mexican Grill
Later in the week, hubby wanted to go to Chipotle for lunch again.
Since he has Dermatitis Herpetiformis and doesn't normally have intestinal symptoms, unless hit with a large amount of cross-contamination or he accidentally eats gluten, he thought Chipotle was our best option.
We really didn't know what else was safe for us to eat in the area, and he felt the problems I had before were due to the cheese. I really didn't want to try again, but hubby was insistent that we didn't have any other choices, so I just went along with it.
(Honestly, I don't know why I didn't think of just going to the store and picking up stuff for sandwiches. Maybe, because I rarely eat them since I have to make my own bread in order to avoid whole grains and flaxmeal.)
This was a different Chipotle than we went to the last time, so it gave us an opportunity to see how different restaurants do things.
On this trip, hubby and I were in front of our group, and I carefully watched what everyone on the line was doing before it was our turn to order.
The girl who was running the tortilla machine was bored, so she put down the flour tortillas she was playing with, picked up the corn tortillas, and began flipping them with her fingers like you'd flip a deck of cards.
At that point, I realized it wasn't just the cheese.
The corn tortillas are contaminated with flour-tortilla molecules long before you ever have a chance to ask your server to change their gloves. That's when it dawned on me that the prior glutening I was experiencing was due to more than just the cheese there.
I had probably been glutened by the corn tortillas as well.
We decided not to order any tortillas with our meal.
This server was more gluten-aware than the prior server. She told all of the servers on the line to change their gloves, then asked if I wanted her to wash her hands first before putting on a new pair of gloves and serving us. She also asked me if I wanted her to wipe down the counter.
This time I was very careful in what I ordered. I kept my stack short and simple:
- white lime-cilantro rice
- some kind of shredded pork
- sauteed bell peppers and onions
- pico de gallo, a fresh salsa
- and a hefty scoop of guacamole
That's it. I skipped the pinto beans because I had been having some cramping since our last visit, and I didn't want to overtax my digestion.
Results of Our Second Visit
The results of that second visit were honestly inconclusive.
By that time, my intestines were severely inflamed and I was bleeding internally, but Chipotle wasn't the only place we'd eaten out at that week.
We'd also been to a Mexican sit-down type of restaurant and a steak house, called the Texas Roadhouse. In addition, I'd been eating more gluten-free products than I normally do.
I could have been glutened by any of those things.
Plus, the grandbabe was used to eating things with gluten, so there were a number of different variables that could have played a role in the symptoms I was experiencing.
For example, we didn't look at the allergy information before we went to the Texas Roadhouse. The lemon pepper they put on the fresh broccoli that we were served might have had gluten in it because their online gluten-friendly menu said to order the fresh vegetables with only regular salt and pepper.
For that reason, I could easily have reacted to the lemon pepper, rather than how I ordered at Chipotle.
In fact, that's quite likely because I didn't need another dose of Imodium after eating there. While the internal bleeding grew worse after we got home, intestinal symptoms often take 1 to 3 days after exposure, or more, before they start for me.
The last thing I ate just before we left was Schar's white bread, which contains quinoa, millet, and psyllium husks. We also had Udi's hamburger buns earlier in the week, which are made with brown rice instead of white.
What I experienced after we got home might have been a combination of all of that grain.
Overall Thoughts On My Experience at Chipotle Mexican Grill
Hubby didn't walk away symptom free, even though it initially appeared he did.
He has large sores on his backside that are going to take several weeks to heal, and he caught a cold right after we got home, which has now progressed into pneumonia.
Apparently, his immune system isn't handling the load.
If you're gluten intolerant and can handle a certain degree of cross-contamination, then Chipotle Mexican Grill would be a good choice, provided you watch the staff for a few minutes, and then order carefully, according to what you see.
If you have celiac disease, where cross-contamination is more problematic, you're taking a risk of developing one of the many complications associated with celiac disease each and every time you eat there.
Depending on how the line works, there was certainly opportunity for a server to contaminate the food before you got there, especially if someone previously touched a flour tortilla and then reached over the top of one of the trays before you arrived.
If you get to know the staff personally, you might be able to teach them what they need to change at their facility to make their food more safe for celiacs, but from what I've seen so far, I have no desire to eat there ever again, unless there are no other options.
So what about you?
Have you ever ate at Chipotle Mexican Grill? If so, please share your experience in the comments below. If your experience was positive, I'd like to hear about that too.
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