Review of Veggie Heaven

We shared two dishes, both labeled "wheat-free" on the dining in menu, and "gluten-free" on the take-out menu: the Singapore noodles and the mango chicken. The food was tasty. The Singapore noodles were particularly good, reminding me of the type that I've eaten many times at a pan-Asian restaurant with real chicken. The mango chicken was a bit sweet, in that old-fashioned American Chinese food style, and there were real pieces of fresh mango.

In both dishes, the "meat" had a satisfying texture that in my experience usually comes from wheat gluten, but they've been doing more exciting things with vegetable protein since my teenage vegetarian days. It was nothing like chicken, but maybe like overcooked pork. We believed them that it was wheat/gluten-free, and not cross-contaminated, and I ate.

Three and a half stars for the food.

Within an hour, I had a sore throat, and now I'm itchy (dermatitis herpetiformis) and up coughing at 3 am, and I assume I'll see all the other effects of being "glutened". I didn't eat anything else outside my routine; more than 90% of the food that I eat is from our home, anyhow. As we went to sleep last night, my husband said, "I don't want you to get lymphoma," the cancer associated with celiac disease.

Sorry, Veggie Heaven. I know that you want to draw in customers who are gluten-free for their own, non-celiac, reasons, but please don't make these gluten-free claims if you can't back them up. As for me, I'm done with vegetarian Chinese restaurants for good. I truly enjoy the food, but it's not worth the risk. Who knows how the gluten got into the dish, but between the lack of quality control in food manufacturing in China (melamine, anyone?), and the amount of gluten floating around these restaurants, mistakes are easy.

Celiac friendly?

No