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Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the replies to my question about Thai and Mexican foods.
Sorry about the long delay in summarising! After receiving all of your
encouraging replies, I got up the courage to try some thai food the other
night at what used to be my favourite restaurant! (prior to becoming gluten
free) The staff were very helpful and phoned back 2 or 3 times to check
things with me. (I was ordering it takeaway). It is quite difficult because
of the language barrier, but I didn't seem to have any reaction, and I was
able to enjoy a yummy rice noodle dish (I couldn't have their phad thai, as
it had soy sauce in it and they couldn't cook it without - but they were
able to suggest another, similar dish).

Thai food:

The overwhelming response was that thai food is normally a good option for
coeliacs. (Apparently in Thailand they don't grow wheat so an authentic thai
restaurant will use no or very little wheat. Of course you can't take this
for granted though!)

The most recommended dish was Phad Thai, which usually uses fish sauce and
tamarind sauce, both of which should be gluten free. As long as the rice
noodles don't contain wheat they should be fine. There seems to be 2 types
of soy sauce, an "american style" which usually contains wheat and an asian
type which doesn't. Unless you can find out which type they use, it is
probably best to avoid soy sauce. It was suggested that you could bring your
own and ask the restaurant to use yours. If you ask, they should be able to
suggest dishes that doesn't contain soy sauce, msg or other gluten sources.
Fish sauce seems to be a more authentic alternative to fish sauce, so many
thai restaurants will use this instead.

Other suggested dishes were fried rice, garlic prawns, satay, basil rolls,
penang shrimp (or chicken, beef etc), egg roll wraps. The general consensus
was that thai food is usually great - just ask the staff which dishes are
okay!

Vietnamese and Indian restaurants were suggested as good options too.

Mexican food:

The responses about Mexican food were a bit more mixed. It seems that there
are a few more things to watch out for, such as marinades on meats, a sauce
called mole sauce which can contain breadcrumbs, a lot of sauces may be
thickened with flour, flour tortillas, some salsas, etc. It seems that the
smaller, more authenic restaurants are more likely to be safe, while chain
restaurants are more likely to use canned sauces and not know the
ingredients.

Dishes that were suggested as okay were: tacos (corn ones), refried beans,
nachos with beans, cheese enchiladas, rice, corn tortillas. Of course these
will vary, and some of these dishes were queried by some people. It seems
that as usual, you will need to ask lots of questions!

Sorry again about the long delay in summarising. Thanks for everyone's help.
Hope everyone can enjoy some nice (gluten-free) thai and mexican foods!

Thanks,
Rawinia
(Australia)