Pei Wei

Ah, Pei Wei, one of life's great compromises. The way I see it, when you have to become Gluten-Free, you have two choices. One: You can become more of a snob, and I mean this in the best possible way. Alright, I mean it more in the third or fourth best possible way. You can double-down on your previous standards and work extra hard to find solutions where you still eat the same quality of food at extra cost and time and effort. Or Two: You can start to make compromises for the sake of your sanity. I'll be flat honest: this blog is pretty much entirely about option two and Pei Wei is a great example of this.

I like Italian food. I'm not at all a fan of Olive Garden. I like Chinese. I'm not a fan of P.F. Chang's. I'm not saying my food has to be ethnically genuine or anything like that. There's just something a little too sanitized about these places for me. They're too artificial in presentation and marketing and food. I realize that a lot of the other things I eat probably fall into those categories but something about Olive Garden and P.F. Chang's just makes it all too obvious and I really want nothing to do with them.

Wanted. I really wanted to have nothing to do with them. I am no longer a chooser. I'm more of a... how shall we put it? Ah, a beggar, more of a beggar. I'm not saying there are no Chinese options once you become gluten-free. There are. I'll get to some of them, though even those are pretty well laden with contamination opportunities. It's just that through P.F. Chang's subsidiary "Pei Wei," there are options that are a bit safer, of the sort you can't easily get otherwise, and ultimately pretty darn tasty, or at least tasty enough to pass muster.

Looking at the locations map, I'd say more than half the country has Pei Weis. Granted, some of those western states are pretty big, so I'm not promising anything. Still, for some people in some places, it's going to be a viable option. They have a specific GF menu but to me the highlight is the sweet and sour chicken and/or shrimp. Again, it's nothing exciting. I think sweet and sour chicken is sort of the lowest level of Chinese food you can get probably just under "meat and rice," but when you become gluten-free it almost immediately becomes a novelty.

The food itself is rewardingly gooey from the sauce (though not breaded) and the portions are decent enough for the price. The average person could probably make at least a meal and a half out of it. My sincere suggestion is that once you get the take-away container home, you hold onto it tight and shake violently, getting the sauce all over the rice too. Coincidentally, it also has one of those great coke fountains (my recipe: Raspberry coke + vanilla coke + a shot of strawberry fanta +... I'll stop now while I still have some semblance of credibility left).

They seem to do a fairly good job in preparation. I always order online (and their website has a lot of adaptable options in the ordering if you want to leave something out or get extra something) but when I get there fifteen minutes later, the food's usually done and ready and they offer tiny little San-J gluten free soy sauce packets to go with it, which come in handy for other things.

So, this is what we do post-diagnosis. We learn, we change, we adapt. We eat Asian food made by Starbucks baristas. The trick is doing it with a smile. Or something.