My partner and I went to Ucluelet last weekend for the May long weekend. I found gluten free dining to be more than challenging and quite disappointing. I had assumed that there would be more gluten free options. I tried doing my research online but only found Gluten Free Girl's blog to be helpful for the Tacofino recommendation. to be helpful.
The first morning that we dined out, we went to The Blue Room Bistro, which the manager of the place that we stayed at recommended. They were accommodating in terms of making my breakfast gluten and dairy free and pan fried my potatoes, which I appreciated but there was no gluten free bread, which I thought was a little strange, given how many people nowadays would order it and it is easy to keep in a freezer, maybe I'm getting spoiled?. The breakfast was pretty bland I thought, they did give me a fruit bowl to take place of the bread. It was okay and I didn't get ill.
We drove into Tofino that day to look around, had a cider but no food. We cooked dinner that night.
The next day, we looked up information on the internet and found that the Fetch Restaurant at the Black Rock Resort had gluten free items on their menu. This was a horrible dining experience, I recommend any gluten free diners to go elsewhere!! We missed breakfast, we were told that we would have to 30 minutes until they did a switch over to lunch, I've never heard of this. We waited 45 minutes to order, the service was poor and slow the entire time. I asked out server if he had any suggestions for gluten free options, the menu only had about 4, a salad, a shellfish bucket, chicken skewers (appy but it had soy, so no good for me), blackened tuna crisps (appy), garlic prawns (another appy) and a dish called a Catalan bowl, that sounded really yummy, so I ordered it, the only real "meal" option but my server came back and said it had soy sauce in it, I cannot have soy either, like I said so I ended up with the blackened tuna crisps for lack of options, this ended up being really spicy, tasting fishy and being super small with a few strands of tortilla chips under the tuna and some cabbage. It took over an hour to get our food, so almost 2 hours in now. It was pretty terrible. My partner went up to find out server, who didn't seem to be around and ordered me gluten free bread knowing that I had such a small dish and it was so unsatisfying.
Tacofino, that is what we had for dinner, I had a chicken burrito bowl, it was quite good, a long wait in line and a while to get our food but it was quite good and they seemed gluten aware and I didn't have any issues afterwards. I do recommend this taco truck on the way to Tofino, my meal was tasty. My partner had a regular burrito and it looked huge and amazing. Make sure you have lots of time and you're not feeling impatient. I bought a big bag of nacho chips to eat while we were waiting and ate it with my salad.
On the way out of town the next day, we went to a coffee shop across the road from from The Blue Room, I had a breakfast bagel (gluten free bagel!) and it was really good, I believe it is called the Barkley Cafe.It was very busy and took a while but it was good and so was the coffee. They also had almond milk for my coffee, a bonus for me! The breakfast bagel had salsa and bacon on it, though I was concerned that the guy warmed the bacon on the panini grill (all food is made on two panini grills behind the counter). The girl who took my order was quite cautious and kept reminding the guy that I had celiac. They warmed the bagel between two pieces of parchment paper, so it would not be contaminated but as I said, I watched him warm the bacon on the dirty grill :(
Ucluelet and Tofino are both beautiful and great places to visit but ....I would recommend staying in a place with a kitchen, as we did and cooking, maybe packing a lunch and lots of snacks went out exploring.
