Review of Tico DC

NOT REALLY GLUTEN FREE!!!!!!A total failure on many levels. My wife and daughter have celiac disease, so cannot have gluten. We informed the waiter of the allergy, and said the whole table would be gluten free. They have a gluten free menu so we expected that they could provide a gluten free dinner. When the first dish arrived with pasta mixed into the corn we notified the waiter of the mistake and he apologized and said he would take extra care with the rest of the meal. We then spent ten minutes convincing my daughter that it was safe for her to eat here. At the end of the meal we asked for the bill, but the waiter offered us a free dessert. We accepted the gesture and asked which deserts were gluten free. Based on his advice we ordered gelato for my daughter and a banana split for me. When the desserts arrived the waiter returned a couple minutes later to tell us that my dessert actually did have gluten (thankfully no one else had eaten any) so we asked him to take it away. When we looked more closely at my daughter's dessert we realized that there was cookie crumble under the gelato. To offer a kid an unsafe dessert to make up for the unsafe meal is frankly just a little bit mean. But more importantly if you offer a gluten free menu you need to be able to execute it. The manager was not even aware of the situation until after we sent the desserts back. Waitstaff, kitchen staff, and management need to work together to ensure that a meal is safe for a guest with dietary restrictions. It's better not to offer a gluten free menu at all than to claim you can execute and fail.