La Brea Bakery Café Gluten-Friendly Lunch
A staple of Disneyland’s Downtown Disney District is the La Brea Bakery Café. Shockingly enough, for a bakery, they actually have many gluten-friendly and allergy-friendly options. While the brunch menu is mainly sandwiches, salads, and soups there are other options such as Oven Roasted Chicken and Pan Fried Salmon available. This review focuses on our recent La Brea Bakery Café gluten-friendly lunch.
All seating for La Break Bakery Café is outdoors, and even in the heat of the summer, there was a nice breeze. Aside from the gluten-free brunch menu above, there is also a gluten-free dinner menu that offers additional main course options such as Mahi-Mahi and Penne Pomodoro.
You can compare the La Brea Bakery Café gluten-friendly lunch and dinner menus to the regular menus posted below.
They usually have bread available for the table but can also offer up gluten-friendly options for the table, and fresh butter to go with it. La Brea Bakery Café offers two types of gluten-free bread – multigrain and white. The breads contain potato and tapioca starch, brown rice flour, rice starch, canola oil, sugar, corn syrup, and soy. There is also a potential cross-contamination risk for milk, soy, nuts, and wheat. Salad dressings contain canola oil, soy, and sugar, so they are not conducive for a paleo or keto diet. Luckily, there is extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar on the table.
On our visit, we tried the B.E.L.T Sandwich. The menu states that the sandwich is served on toasted gluten-free white or multigrain bread. The B.E.L.T features two over-easy eggs, heirloom tomatoes, pecanwood smoked bacon, butter leaf lettuce, and herb aioli. The sandwich is usually served with fresh fruit, but we opted for a side salad instead. The plate that came out to me was not in the form of a sandwich, as you can see in the photo below. While it is very good, it was inedible as a sandwich. The lettuce is too large, the bacon (hidden under the other items) is not sliced, and the lettuce is not dispersed evenly over the bread. It had to be eaten as mostly eggs and toast, which was very good, but not a sandwich as expected.
The other dish we tried was the La Brea Bakery Burger. A burger topped with balsamic onions, white cheddar, lettuce, vine ripe tomatoes, and served on gluten-friendly bread or butter lettuce for a keto version. Omitting the cheddar makes this dish perfect for a paleo diet. For our visit, we opted for a lettuce-wrapped, paleo version. We had asked them to omit the balsamic onions since they are premade with an oil blend that is 75% EVOO and 25% canola oil. However, they were included, and we did not have time to send the dish back as there was a plane to catch. The burger itself, sandwiched between the butter lettuce leaves, was delicious. The side salad was nothing special, but with the EVOO and balsamic on the table, it was tasty and filling.
For what was expected to be a limited menu, we were pleasantly surprised by the quantity of allergy-friendly options for our La Brea Bakery Café gluten-friendly lunch. While most are primarily gluten-free, it is still nice to see a large number of options available for paleo, keto, and other dietary needs. The staff was very accommodating, and Chef Christian had no problem returning to the kitchen multiple times to check on ingredients for us.