Eating gluten-free in Hanover

Hanover is a state capital and a trade fair city, and greener than its reputation suggests, with the Herrenhausen Gardens, the Maschsee lake and a city forest right in the middle. Lower Saxon cooking is down to earth, and for you the gluten is often in the sausage rather than the dough.

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

Can you eat out gluten-free in Hanover?

Yes, and Hanover gives you more choice than many people expect. The centre is compact, and the light rail gets you quickly to the List, to Linden or to the Maschsee, where many cafés and restaurants are. Most of the checked places offer gluten-free options rather than cooking entirely gluten-free. For you that means the choice is there, and the asking stays.

What the allergen information tells you is not quite enough. It has to say which of the 14 allergen groups is in a dish as an ingredient or a processing aid, naming the cereal itself in the case of gluten. It may be given verbally, in which case a written or electronic record has to exist and be made available to you on request. What it leaves out is everything that joins the dish while it is being cooked: the pan that held breaded food before, the fryer shared by chips and schnitzel, the knife that has just cut bread. That is the part you have to ask about.

What should I know about Hanover?

The first thing is the trade fair. Hanover has one of the largest exhibition grounds in the world, and during big fairs the city is fully booked: hotels, restaurants, tables. Kitchens then work flat out, and a careful special order quickly becomes a hasty one. In trade fair weeks, book early and mention your gluten question as you book.

The second thing is the cooking. Lower Saxon cooking knows kale, asparagus and roasts, and much of it sounds harmless. The gluten here is less often in the dough than in sausage, groats and thickened sauces. Good choices are often meat, fish and potatoes without the sauce. With anything that comes with a sauce, ask what it is thickened with, and with any sausage, ask for the ingredient list.

And the third: Hanover is a university city with a lot of young people, and Linden and the List have many places serving bowls, burgers and vegan food. That widens your choice, but vegan does not mean gluten-free. Seitan is wheat protein, and many meat substitutes are bound with wheat.

Which Lower Saxon dishes contain gluten?

In Lower Saxon cooking the gluten is often where you cannot see it:

• Grünkohl mit Pinkel und Bregenwurst (kale with Pinkel and Bregenwurst sausages): Many recipes stir oat groats or oat flakes into the kale, and oats are only suitable for you when they are explicitly declared gluten-free. Pinkel is a groats sausage made with oat or barley groats, and barley is gluten. With Bregenwurst it depends on the butcher. Ask about the ingredients of the kale and of both sausages, because a no to one question says nothing about the others.
• Spargel mit Soße Hollandaise (asparagus with hollandaise): In spring the asparagus comes from the surrounding countryside and is on almost every menu. The asparagus itself is gluten-free, and so is a hollandaise made from egg yolk, butter and lemon. Ready-made hollandaise from a packet, though, often contains wheat flour or wheat starch. Ask whether the sauce is whisked fresh.
• Welfenspeise: Hanover’s dessert, named after the Guelph dynasty: a vanilla cream at the bottom and a wine foam on top, white and yellow like the house colours. The cream is thickened with starch or custard powder, and custard powder can contain wheat starch. Ask what it is thickened with.
• Heidschnuckenbraten (roast heath lamb): Roast meat from the moorland sheep of the Lüneburg Heath, usually with a dark sauce. The meat is fine, the sauce often is not. Order without the sauce or ask whether it is thickened with flour.
• Gravy and soups: Plain country cooking thickens with a roux, and a thickened sauce cannot be rescued afterwards. Agree on a swap for starch before anything is cooked, or order the dish without the sauce.
• To drink: The Lüttje Lage is Hanover’s drinking ritual, a small dark beer and a Korn, drunk from two glasses at once. The beer contains gluten unless it says “gluten-free” explicitly. Korn is a spirit distilled from grain, and under EU law distillates do not need to be labelled for gluten, because no gluten passes over in distilling. Wine and sparkling wine are naturally gluten-free. Malt beer and other malt drinks are made from barley malt and contain gluten. With anything containing syrup, ask.

Your best bets are meat, fish, vegetables, potatoes and salad without breading and without a thickened sauce. Ask about the preparation there too, for instance whether things are fried in the same pan.

What should I watch for at the marksmen’s fair and the Maschsee festival?

Hanover’s Schützenfest, the marksmen’s fair, is said to be the largest in the world, with beer tents, rides and lots of stalls. People eat on the move and in the tent: sausage in a roll, chips, schnitzel, baked goods. At a stall one fryer or one grill serves everything, and even when a dish’s ingredients are gluten-free in themselves, cross-contamination there is next to impossible to rule out. At the Schützenfest, food of your own is not a stopgap, it is the plan.

The Maschsee festival in summer is similar, only calmer. Stalls with food from around the world line the lake, and it pays to ask specifically there: a stall with grilled vegetables or corn has better chances than one with tarte flambée. Packaged goods with a list of ingredients, and drinks, are the exception you can always build on.

How does Gluti help me in Hanover?

In Gluti you can see on the map which places in and around Hanover 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”. For many places you can also see whether other people would eat gluten-free there again and what they were able to eat.

Because most places in Hanover offer gluten-free options, other people’s experiences are especially worth a look here: whoever has eaten gluten-free there before can tell how carefully the kitchen works. Save what works as favourites, and in a trade fair week you will not have to start searching. If you know a good place in Hanover or the region that is missing from Gluti, you can suggest it in the app.

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. 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 Hanover.