Gluten Free London Meet Up

I joined a couple of Meet Up groups recently. I was aware of Meet Up years ago, but had never been brave enough to venture to any meets. Unsurprisingly, I've mostly chosen to join food based groups, and I went to my first social with Gluten Free London Club on Monday to enjoy the rarest of all things- actually delicious gluten free pizza and beer!

The event was hosted by Celia, a Czech gluten free beer, at The Regent in Islington. The night started with a free beer (Yay! Free beer!), and then we all sat down for an informative little presentation by Martin and Nick from Celia, which was accompanied by mini quiches from WAGfree. The beer itself is 4.5%, uses saaz hops in a traditional brewing process, is suitable for vegans and celiacs and tastes like a damn good lager! Where's the downside?

Martin is a chef and a bit of a gluten free expert with his own specialist restaurant in Prague, Na Zlate. He's clearly passionate about his product and the world of gluten free consumption, and showed great knowledge and enthusiasm. Nick is clearly an impassioned beer fan, and due to the lovely, smooth, bittersweet taste of Celia, gave an enthusiastic talk about all the complexities of this craft beverage. What is there to say really? The man likes beer.

Although we were only expecting one, we were offered more lovely golden Celia in exchange for no money (Yay! Free Beer!), and the canapes kept coming too. The pastry on the quiches was light and crisp, but not dry and the filling was plentiful, like a damn good quiche. There were also a couple of taster pizzas from The Regent's kitchen, with bases made by Annie's Larder. These are pretty certainly the best gluten free pizzas I've ever had, and I promptly ordered us a pizza each at the bar. The bases were light, thin, crisp and perfect. The choice of toppings is vast and the quality of ingredients is clearly very high.  Like a damn good pizza. Basically I did what any person in heaven does, over consumed until I felt ill. Yes people, that's right, the beer and pizza was so much like damn good beer and damn good pizza, that I couldn't help but keep shoving it into my piggy little face until the idea of standing up was akin to the prospect of running a marathon as the back end of John McCririck's panto horse. In Australia. After a Sri Lankan feast.


I have a feeling I'm going to want to make a lot of trips to Islington now I know that there is readily available damn good gluten free pizza just waiting to be devoured. The little tarts. Although they could do better to advertise this fact, I might be quite short sighted, but if I hadn't been there as a group of gluten avoiders specifically talking about gluten avoidance, I would never have known that gluten free options were available to me. Make bigger signs people! I will happily give you my hard-earned cash in return for damn good pizza and damn good beer that doesn't make me immediately ill. If you know of any gluten free hidden gems, let me know, I want to hunt those fiendish little sneaks out!

As evidence have a couple of pictures of the joy! Look at this man who loves getting into bed with pastry. Look at him enjoying the party that gluten wasn't invited to! Doesn't he look happy? DOESN'T HE?!

As an extra special treat, have a look at the receipt- it's a liar! There was plenty of glutton, and I was at the centre of it!