Review of Olmsted

We went for dinner here. It was our second time, but first time with our 9 year old daughter who has celiac. We do not have celiac.

The food and atmosphere at Olmsted are exceptional. A number of dishes are naturally gluten free, a few others can be altered to be gluten free. The kitchen is small but they understand cross contamination -- that showed when I spoke to the host before going to dinner, and when we spoke to our server about separate frying for two fried items, and when she gave us an annotated menu (the menu is not so big) showing what was GF, what was not, and what could be altered to be GF.

As I said the service is attentive and very friendly, the atmosphere very cozy, and the food is excellent.

BUT, my daughter got glutened (the first time ever) because of very poor communication and attentiveness on their part. They have a "smores" dessert. Our server said "that is gluten free because we have gluten free graham crackers." I was so amazed, I said "really!?" And I excitedly told my daughter and wife. So we ordered that dessert.

They then move us to their beautiful garden to eat the dessert, including bucket of burning coals to roast our house-made marshmallows. Because they moved us to enjoy the garden, we had a new server. Before the dessert came I went back to the original server for the night to double check, "the dessert is gluten free?" The answer was yes.

So they brought out a plate of lovely looking graham crackers, a hershey bar and some very nice looking house-made marshmallows. They also brought out a plate of round ginger snap cookies, and that server put them down and said, "gluten free ginger snap cookies." I assumed, as in our previous dining at the restaurant (without our daughter), that this was a little extra treat from the kitchen, i addition to the "gluten free graham crackers" we were told about.

I proceeded to make a "smore" sandwich with the "gluten free graham crackers." In the minds eye and common understanding of graham crackers they are flat and rectangular, and basically taste of sugar--they are decidedly not small, round and ginger flavored. So I never thought for a second that the "gluten free ginger snaps" were what the original server meant when she said, "we have gluten free graham crackers." And the fact that it was a new server in the backyard means that the attentiveness to the celiac customer that "our" server had was just not there for this new server who just seemed to be the server dealing with people's backyard desserts.

This was bad communication on their end, nobody should have every said "we have gluten free graham crackers." What should have been said is "we have GF ginger snaps as a replacement for graham crackers." Then they should have asked if we wanted both or just the GF ginger snaps.

This all resulted, for the first time in nearly 6 years of not getting glutened, to about 2 hours of vomiting and diahrea—worse is the unknown amount and duration of damage to the small intestine.

So...please be extra careful at Olmsted if ordered dishes that have gluten free options.

Celiac friendly?

Yes