Many months ago, a restaurant in the Toco Hills shopping center in Atlanta, Uncle Maddio’s Pizza, began offering gluten-free pizza. There seemed to be a bit of confusion on the part of the restaurant in the beginning about what safe gluten-free service involved. At least that is what several gluten-free customers there reported was happening. With the help of those patrons, the restaurant tweaked a few things about how they prepared the gluten-free pizzas and their gluten-free customer base grew.
The Toco Hills shopping center is a landmark in Atlanta. Thinking about it brings back memories of visiting my Grandmother up here when I was a teenager. She lived near there and one time, my cousin and I got to see a movie (“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees) at the shopping center by ourselves. What a big deal that was for two thirteen-year-olds! The theatre has long since closed and the shopping center has gone through many transformations since then. Currently, it’s being renovated yet again.
We found ourselves needing to have lunch in the Brookhaven area on a Sunday and our first choice for lunch was closed. We decided to trek over to Uncle Maddios to check out their gluten-free pizza for ourselves. We were the first customers of the day and I had called earlier in the week to find out about sauces, dressings, and so forth. We needed to know what we could order when we arrived because like a lot of places in our area, your order upon entering the restaurant.
The team at Uncle Maddio’s Pizza makes fresh sauces and dressings daily. They use good quality ingredients and offer good value for regular and gluten-free pizzas and salads. We decided to order one pizza and one salad and split them between us. We chose a gluten-free pizza with black olives, mushrooms, pepperoni, and a Greek salad. The build-your-own-pizzas comes with three toppings which is not the case with any other pizza joint here that offers gluten-free pizza (that I’m aware of).
After we ordered, we noticed that the cook got out a gluten-free crust and put the sauce on it with a ladle. The ladle touched the crust and then the ladle went into the sauce container. See the problem? It wasn’t an issue for us because our pizza was the first (of any kind) being made the day. However, it might prove a problem for other gluten-free patrons. This is exactly what so many people had reported was happening months ago, but eventually many also reported that the place seemed to get the hang of safe preparation for gluten-free crusts.
Maybe the guy making our pizza knew that since our pizza was the first made that day, it didn’t matter if the ladle touched the crust since it had not touched a gluten crust. Maybe there are two containers for each sauce – one for gluten pizzas and one for gluten-free. I’m not really sure what their procedure is and I was taking the day off from being the gluten-free police. I’d go back to Uncle Maddio’s again, but would ask for a new container of sauce and a fresh ladle to be used, unless I was the first customer of the day.
In the end, our pizza was very good and truly gluten-free. It was the smallest-sized gluten-free pizza I’ve been served here, but for the cost, it’s still a great value. It’s a thin crispy crust and it didn’t have an odd taste, texture, or aftertaste to it. Hopefully, the staff will review and improve their gluten-free pizza building technique, because if they prepare the gluten-free pizzas the way mine was prepared (after making gluten pizzas), it is likely that some people would have problems with the finished product.
My stepmom, Christy, ordered one of BJ’s giant stuffed potatoes. While Christy doesn’t have to eat gluten-free, her meal happened to be on the gluten-free menu, so I wanted to share it here. I couldn’t believe the size of the potato!! I took a picture of it with my Blackberry in the picture so you can get an idea of the size.
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