Wow, wow, wow, a restaurant that serves bread and oil. Tara Barker of A Baking Life will be working in a new restaurant venture, 40 Paper, an Italian Bistro. in Camden, Maine. They’ll be serving a plethora of gluten-free dishes as well as this amazing looking gluten-free Rosemary Focaccia. This looks like my kind of restaurant.
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“…This is how Josh and I want customers at his restaurant to feel. If you’re coming for dinner, and need to eat gluten-free? No need to apologize or worry or feel uncomfortable at the thought of the kitchen making you a special plate. The menu is covered with gluten-free items for you to choose from. And we won’t be apologizing either, because we know that, whatever you choose, you will end up with a meal that rivals the quality and flavor of the dishes your gluten-full dining companions are enjoying. Because if it doesn’t meet our own personal standards, it doesn’t make it onto the menu. Everyone here eats well.
Focaccia is not usually a pastry chef’s responsibility. But as the resident gluten-free baker, I am by default responsible for all gluten-free baked goods, sweet or savory. And Josh doesn’t want his gluten-free customers to have to continue missing out on the first round of nibbles the kitchen sends out to each table: tender focaccia with herbed extra virgin olive oil for dipping. And so I got charged with creating a celiac-friendly focaccia so good that those who needed to eat from that bread bowl would also really want to, and so that Josh would never feel the need to apologize for serving sub-par food to his gluten-free diners…”
