A newly opened First Street bakery and café bustled on a recent Tuesday with people enjoying buttery blueberry scones, gourmet chicken club sandwiches, organic iced tea, fresh baked cheesecake and chocolate chip cupcakes.
With ample seating and a quirky “Alice in Wonderland” theme, Patti’s Perfect Pantry is a comfortable cafe, the kind of place that begs for extended lunches with friends or a good book.
Oh, and it should be noted: the entire menu is gluten-free.
Patti’s Perfect Pantry is the only dedicated gluten-free restaurant south of San Carlos, which is 56 miles from Gilroy, and has already drawn a strong following of people with food allergies from all over the Central Coast and Silicon Valley since setting up camp in town two months ago.
Gluten-free products are often mocked for having the same consistency as “cardboard and sawdust,” as comedian Kelly MacLean once joked. But Patti Tartaglia, owner of Patti’s Perfect Pantry, is on a mission to disprove that stigma.
“Gluten-free shouldn’t sacrifice taste,” said Tartaglia, a perky 55-year-old redhead from Morgan Hill, from her shop in the Hecker Pass Plaza Shopping Center next to Dollar Tree.
Gluten is a protein found in foods processed from wheat, barley and rye. It helps baked goods to rise and gives bread a chewy texture. In the last decade, millions of Americans have cut the substance out of their diet and have preached to their friends about all of the unexplained health maladies – from fatigue to flatulence – that disappeared when they switched to the gluten-free life.
James Swan, 59 of San Juan Bautista, has been giving the gluten-free diet a stab in efforts to reduce his blood-sugar levels at the recommendation of his friends. Two weeks into the diet and sick of ordering the Cobb salad at restaurants (often the only gluten-free option on the menu), Swan was happy to stumble on Patti’s Perfect Pantry earlier this week.
“I was just cruising the area, wondering what I might be able to order that is gluten-free, and then I found this,” he said, enjoying a blueberry scone as he waited for his sandwich. “I’ll definitely be back.”
The food tastes good, even according to palates accustomed to gluten.
Grady Carroll, 30 of Hollister, stopped by the store for the first time recently during his lunch break. He opted for a chicken club sandwich made with a fresh-baked poppy seed roll, homemade garlic aioli spread and thick slices of heirloom tomatoes from the local Gilroy Demonstration Garden.
Carroll isn’t gluten-free, nor does he plan to change his diet anytime soon. But he agreed he would certainly lunch at Patti’s again.
“This is different from the run-of-the-mill sandwich or burger place,” Carroll said. “It’s fresh tasting, a lot of flavor. I’d come here again, regardless of it being gluten-free.”
Many of the tasteless, crumbly food products with the gluten-free labels found in the alternative foods aisle in grocery stores such as Nob Hill Foods and Safeway have turned people off, Tartaglia said. She believes that breads and pastries made without wheat can be as good – if not better – than traditional baked goods.
When Tartaglia removed gluten from her diet six years ago because of chronic health problems including digestive complications and “brain fog,” she was so horrified by the selection of gluten-free products at the time that she abstained from bread entirely and survived on rice cakes.
“I ate so many rice cakes, I’ll never be able to look at one again,” she said.
She decided to apply her degree in science from Long Island University and experience as a nutritionist to come up with her own gluten-free baking recipes. After three years of research and trial-and-error, Tartaglia perfected a flour that mimics the texture, consistency and rising characteristics of wheat flour, using tapioca flour, potato flour, sorgum flour, oat flour, coconut flour and other alternative grains.
Tartaglia began by selling a gluten-free pie crust at People and Planet, a family-owned natural foods shop in Morgan Hill, and built her clientele there for more than a year before opening her own store. Her customers know her products and come from San Jose, Monterey and everywhere in between.
Well established in larger urban areas for more than a decade, the mainstreaming of gluten-free products is just now starting to catch on in South County.
But Tartaglia said there were many closeted gluten-free eaters in the area who were going at their lifestyle alone. Patti’s Perfect Pantry’s mission is to unite and empower those gluten-free stragglers by giving them a place where they can order anything off the menu.
“People ask me all the time, ‘What can we do to make sure you stay here?’” she said.
While Patti’s Perfect Pantry is the only solely gluten-free bakery in the area, there are a few other places in South County that offer gluten-free pastry selections, including Mitra’s Bakery on Vineyard Boulevard in Morgan Hill, next door to Nob Hill Foods.
Mitra Nazari, 46, began offering gluten-free bread alternatives three years ago when a friend gave her a book on the health benefits of wheat-free living. Today, her selection includes made-to-order gluten-free pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, cinnamon bread, wedding cakes, baklava, macaroons and cookies.
“If you want something gluten-free, just come in and talk to us. We will make it,” Nazari said.
On an even smaller scale, a homeschooling mother of four in San Martin, Julie Hoefling, began baking gluten-free sourdough bread from her home last year. Her family took wheat out of their diet eight years ago when Hoefling’s 8-year-old daughter suffered from chronic migraines. After modifying their diets, Hoefling said the migraines, among a handful of other health problems, went away.
What Hoefling, 44, missed the most after switching to gluten-free was sourdough bread. Discouraged with the dense, flavorless options found at the grocery store, Hoefling took the challenge to make her own.
Hoefling – now the owner of Rise and Shine Bakery which she operates from her home kitchen – sells her loaves of French and sourdough bread to her friends as well as at People and Planet in Morgan Hill.
“Mixing all the flours to get the right consistency without using wheat, it’s time-consuming and labor intensive. That’s why the gluten-free breads at stores taste so bad,” Hoefling said from her home, as she spooned her dough on to baguette trays before loading them in her oven.
In the eight years that Hoefling’s family has forgone gluten, she said she “cheated” on her diet once with a slice of pizza – and she regretted it.
“We feel so much better, I don’t think we’ll ever go back,” she said.
