May 26, 2013

Gluten Freedom in... Detroit?

Yesterday the Mr. and I drove up to Detroit for a Tigers Game.  (One of these days I'll tell more tales, but we are on a quest to hit every ballpark in the MLB/MiLB systems... more on this another time).  It was a 4:08 start time, so we had time to kind of meander up there from Columbus, stopping along the way for lunch between my stretches as an amateur race car driver on I-75.  Before we left, I looked up some food options in the Detroit metro area - gluten free, but not necessarily chain-type restaurants if we could avoid them.  I didn't see too many restaurant options (although we had a fantastic late lunch at Maggiano's Little Italy - a great GF option if you're near one);  but what I did find was a wee little bakery out on Five Mile Road west of Detroit.  The place?  Rumi's Passion Bakery.  The goods?  INCREDIBLE. Once we found the place - no small feat since it's kind of buried in a strip mall between some industrial areas and some older homes - we wandered inside... the first thing I noticed was how normal it looked.  Not your typical sprout-eating-cane-juice-sweetening-Birkenstock-wearing-dread-sporting kind of specialty bakery, but it looked like a cute little mom and pop place. Normal. Nothing scary, no ingredients I couldn't pronounce, no vacuum-sealed sawdust-tasting science projects for $12 a piece.  They had fancy decorated birthday cakes in the cooler case..  fresh bread baguettes cooling by the counter...  it all looked so good!!   I wanted one of EVERYTHING!!   I picked up some pita bread (fluffy and not chewy at all); some crusty foccacia rolls (perfectly herbed and salted); some apricot kolacki (Polish cookies that are positively to die for) and some Rosemary and Olive bread that was so good, I forgot it was gluten free!  We polished (haha) off the kolacki before we even got home from the road-trip, and the rest of the items were meticulously packed, labeled and frozen for later use. My only regret in going there is that it's a strictly local bakery.. they don't have online sales, although they do work through a third-party vendor if you want items shipped.  Personally, I think it's worth the drive for the kolaki.  Just saying...

As an aside,  it was a great ball game -  an afternoon game in Detroit on a cloudless warm spring day, so there was a near sell-out crowd.  It was hotter than blue blazes up in the nosebleeds where we were sitting, and I of course forgot to pack the sunscreen... but the good folks at Comerica Park were kind enough to give me two complimentary sunscreen towelettes when I went to the Guest Services booth to ask which souvenir shop sold first aid items in the stadium.  I was SUPER impressed with this, as I've been to many a Reds game and never encountered this kind of hospitality!  Kudos to the folks of the Detroit Tigers organization for running such a fan-friendly ballpark!

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