Eating gluten-free in Frankfurt

Frankfurt is one of the largest cities in this overview: trade fairs, an airport, the banking district and restaurants from all over the world. That makes for plenty of choice. Hessian cooking still deserves a second look, and with one of its dishes you are in luck.

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

Can you eat out gluten-free in Frankfurt?

Yes, and more easily than in most German cities. Frankfurt has many international kitchens, and some of them work with rice, maize or chickpeas rather than wheat to begin with. On top of that, people from elsewhere eat here constantly, so special requests are part of the daily routine.

Do not rely on that unchecked, though. International does not automatically mean gluten-free: soy sauce is usually brewed with wheat, plenty of dumplings contain wheat flour, and flatbread from a shared oven puts flour on every tray. And allergen information only gets you halfway. It names which of the 14 allergen groups belongs in a dish as an ingredient or processing aid, naming the cereal itself in the case of gluten. How the kitchen works, so whether the fat, the board and the tongs stay separate, is not in there, and that is what decides whether a dish is any use to you.

What should I know about Frankfurt?

Frankfurt has a rhythm that helps you once you know it. In the banking district the lunch window is tight, the kitchen works for throughput and has the least room for questions. Half an hour later the same place is a different one. During big trade fairs, city-centre restaurants are often fully booked, so it is worth reserving and naming your question as you do.

The second thing is passing through. Many people are here only between two connections, and the airport and the main station are the worst places for a gluten-free meal that has to come together on the spot. The S-Bahn, on the other hand, gets you from the airport into town in about a quarter of an hour. With a three-hour stop, a proper meal in the city centre is more realistic than searching between terminals.

And the third: packaged goods with a list of ingredients are easy to come by in a city like this, in market halls and supermarkets as much as in the station shops. That is not dinner, but it is a reliable fallback, and it beats taking a chance at a stall.

Which Frankfurt dishes contain gluten?

Hessian cooking has met you halfway here, and only halfway:

• Grüne Soße: Seven herbs, namely borage, chervil, cress, parsley, salad burnet, sorrel and chives, stirred into soured cream, sour cream, oil and mustard, with boiled potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. The herb mix is protected as “Frankfurter Grüne Soße”, so the set of herbs is fixed. In this form it needs no flour and is naturally gluten-free, which makes it your best dish in this city. Two catches remain: some kitchens thicken the sauce with a roux anyway, and it often sits next to breaded schnitzel on the menu. Ask about the thickening and you will know.
• Handkäs mit Musik: A sour-milk cheese with the “Musik” of onions, vinegar, oil and pepper. Neither contains cereal. The bread beside it does, and butter and crumbs travel across the same plate. Ask for a plate without bread rather than pushing it aside.
• Rippchen mit Kraut: A cured pork chop which, unlike Kasseler, is not necessarily smoked. The meat and the sauerkraut are usually fine. It is classically served with bread or a roll, and a sauce beside it may be thickened with flour. Ask about those two things separately.
• Frankfurter Würstchen: Under the German food code they are made from pork, and beef is ruled out. That says nothing about cereals, because the same food code generally allows cereals, starch and vegetable protein in meat products. So ask to see the packaging of the brand the place uses, and leave the roll out.
• Frankfurter Kranz: A base of Madeira-type or sponge mixture made with wheat flour, buttercream and brittle. The tin is dusted with flour as well, so the cake meets it twice. A gluten-free version has to replace both, not only the batter.
• Bethmännchen: Marzipan, almonds, icing sugar, egg, often rose water, and characteristically three almond halves pressed into the sides. Because marzipan sounds safe, this one is a trap: the common recipes have thirty to forty grams of wheat flour in the dough. Versions without exist, but you cannot tell by looking, only by asking.
• To drink: Cider is made from apples and is naturally gluten-free, as are wine and sparkling wine. That holds for the young, still sweet cider in autumn and for cider diluted with water. Beer made from barley or wheat contains gluten unless it says “gluten-free” explicitly.

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

What should I watch for in a cider house?

The traditional cider houses are a category of their own, and their menu is shorter than it looks. A lot of it runs on breaded food, schnitzel and fried fish, bread comes with practically everything, and the kitchen is small, often with one fryer for all of it. The fried fish is doubly awkward: it comes in batter or crumbs and out of the same fat as the schnitzel. “Without the coating” is no help against that.

Two things do help. Go early, while the kitchen still has time, because the fuller the evening the less can be improvised. And ask for Grüne Soße with boiled potatoes and eggs: nothing in it has to be breaded or thickened. If the kitchen confirms there is no flour in the sauce, you have found a reliable dish there, and Handkäs without bread is the smaller version of the same. The cider from the stoneware jug is harmless anyway.

How does Gluti help me in Frankfurt?

In Gluti you can see on the map which places in and around Frankfurt are listed. Every one of them 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”.

Precisely because there is so much choice here, the level is the quickest shortcut: you can see at a glance where you can eat without worrying and where you have to ask more closely, instead of working through a range nobody in Frankfurt has an overview of. For many places you can also see whether other people would eat gluten-free there again and what they were able to eat. If you often move between the airport, the trade fair grounds and the city centre, save a favourite in each of those areas, and you will no longer be deciding under time pressure.

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. For passing through, the guide on gluten-free travel will help. If you know a good place in Frankfurt 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 Frankfurt or the Rhine-Main area.