Eating gluten-free in Essen

Essen sits in the middle of the Ruhr area, and that shows in the food: chip stands, Trinkhallen and a kitchen somewhere between the Rhineland and Westphalia. Checked places are still few here, but the next city is only half an hour away.

Gluti offers guidance and is not a medical device. Its information does not replace medical advice.

Can you eat out gluten-free in Essen?

Yes, but you will plan more here than in a city with plenty of choice in the centre. The network of checked places is still a modest one, and what defines the city on a plate is the difficult part for you: the stand, the fryer, breaded food. Nothing in the Ruhr area stops at the city boundary, though, and with the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn you are in the next city within half an hour.

Mandatory allergen information says which of the 14 allergen groups are in a dish as ingredients or processing aids. If it is given verbally, a written or electronic record has to exist, and you may see that record on request (§ 4 LMIDV). How the kitchen works, so whether the fat, the board and the tongs stay separate, is not in there.

What should I know about Essen?

What shapes eating in Essen is less the restaurant than the stand. The Trinkhalle culture (corner kiosks selling drinks and snacks) is part of the intangible cultural heritage of North Rhine-Westphalia, and because shops here may open around the clock on working days, you can still get something late. Do not count on Sundays, when far from all of them open. Usually it is fried or breaded. And vegan does not mean gluten-free: seitan is wheat protein, and many meat substitutes are bound with wheat.

Reckon with trade fair days as well: the big public fairs in October and at the end of November fill the city, the kitchens are working flat out and a careful special order quickly turns into a hurried one. Reserve then, raise your question right away and widen your radius beyond the city centre.

Which Rhenish and Westphalian dishes contain gluten?

The gluten is rarely in the star of the dish but in the thickening:

• Currywurst mit Pommes (sausage with curry sauce and chips): The critical parts are not the potato and the meat but the sausage, the sauce and the fat. The kind of sausage tells you nothing, because the German food code generally allows cereals, starch and vegetable protein in meat products, wheat protein included. Ask to see the ingredient list for the sausage and the sauce, and see below for more.
• Pfefferpotthast: A Westphalian stew of beef and the same amount of onions, heavily peppered. It is classically thickened with grated stale bread or breadcrumbs, and that is not a trace but a main ingredient. A swap for starch has to be agreed beforehand, because a thickened sauce cannot be rescued.
• Rheinischer Sauerbraten (marinated pot roast): Beef steeped for days and braised for a long time, with a dark sweet and sour sauce. It is thickened with Printen or Lebkuchen (spiced biscuits), instead of or together with flour or starch, so the gluten can sit in two places. “We use starch” is therefore not enough, and you ask about the dumplings and the red cabbage as well.
• Reibekuchen (potato pancakes): Flat fritters of grated potatoes and onions, fried in fat. Flour belongs to the basic recipe, because flour, salt and egg go in once the liquid has been pressed out, and while the Rhenish method does return the starch, it does not replace the flour. Assume there is flour in the mixture unless the kitchen confirms a recipe without it.
• Himmel un Ähd (heaven and earth): Mashed potato with apple sauce, with fried Blutwurst (black pudding) and fried onions. Not every black pudding contains grain, which sits in particular kinds made with bread rolls or with groats and flour, but crispy onions are classically tossed in flour and deep-fried, ready-made ones too. Ask about the kind of sausage, about the onions and about whether breaded food was in the pan before.
• Stielmus, also Rübstiel: A vegetable of the stalks and leaves of young turnips, braised and mixed with mashed potatoes. There is no fixed recipe, so flour is not a given here, but it is not ruled out either. Sausage and a Stippe (gravy for dipping) classically come with it, and that is often thickened with flour, so ask about it.
• Westfälischer Knochenschinken (Westphalian ham on the bone): Raw ham on the bone, traditionally made with nothing but a salt and saltpetre mixture, sugar and beech smoke. It only becomes reliable with the ingredient list, though, because the German food code generally allows cereal products and starch in meat products, and curing mixes can contain carriers with gluten. Pumpernickel classically lies beside it, at least 90 per cent coarse rye meal under the food code, and with goods from the counter ask about the slicing machine: if bread goes over it too, take an uncut piece.
• Essener Brot (Essene bread): The name has nothing to do with the city but with the Essenes of ancient Judaism. It is a wholemeal bread of sprouted rye, spelt or wheat. Sprouting only breaks down part of the gluten, and part is not gluten-free.

Your best bets are potatoes, meat, fish and vegetables without breading and without a thickened sauce. Ask about the fat, the pan and the board there too.

What should I watch for at a chip stand?

Stands and Trinkhallen are thicker on the ground in Essen than restaurants with a gluten-free menu, and the stand is the hardest place for you. The potato on its own brings no gluten with it, but the fat and the goods do. The same fryer takes the Frikandel, which is bound with wheat or soya flour, plus breaded schnitzel. And many frozen chips have a crisp coating of starch and flour, some of it rice flour and gluten-free, some of it not.

So ask two things: whether there is a fryer just for chips, and which pack the chips come out of. If there is only one, leave the chips out, because ordering them plain does not help against the fat. With the sausage, have the packaging shown to you, and with the curry sauce the tub or the bottle.

If none of that works, the Trinkhalle is the way out: packaged goods with an ingredient list and drinks, on working days until late at night, on Sundays only if you are lucky. Malzbier and Malztrunk are brewed from malt, and that malt is usually barley malt, sometimes wheat malt, so neither is for you, even if the ingredients say only “malt”.

How does Gluti help me in Essen?

In Gluti you can see on the map which places in and around Essen are listed. Every place is checked by the Gluti team before it appears. The level tells you how a place works: “100% gluten-free”, “Separate preparation” or “Gluten-free options”. At the top level the questions about the fryer and the board fall away. Pull the map out beyond the city boundary all the same: the next city is often closer by train than some districts are.

Even checked information is no guarantee, because things can change in a kitchen. So ask every time anyway. Which questions work and which answers are a warning sign is in the article What to ask in a restaurant, and the background on fryers, pizza ovens and toasters is in the article on cross-contamination. If that has you travelling a lot between the cities of the Ruhr area, the guide on gluten-free travel will help. If you know a good place in Essen that is missing from Gluti, you can suggest it in the app. And for talking to others: the German coeliac society (Deutsche Zöliakie-Gesellschaft, DZG) runs volunteer-led discussion groups across the country, and the DZG can tell you whether there is one in Essen or the Ruhr area.