The BEST low FODMAP friendly restaurant I’ve been to so far!

Today I’ve decided to post about my recent trip to Sorella Sorella restaurant near Newcastle in the UK. 

I’m back over in the UK visiting my grandparents at the moment and they wanted to take me out for Italian food for dinner. Now, don’t get me wrong I was really excited to go out for dinner with them but I always find choosing a restaurant in an area that I don’t know well really hard, especially if it’s an Italian one which are known for flavouring any of their tomato sauces with both garlic and onion. 

There are often a good few restaurants that will at least offer one gluten free option which is amazing but very few have something that can be entirely low FODMAP because, like always, the onion and garlic are almost impossible to avoid, especially in an Italian restaurant!  

So, I was a bit dubious about being able to eat here despite the amazing reviews about their full gluten free menu which is huge and has so many options. If you’re not at all concerned about low FODMAP foods and are only looking for gluten free then you will eat like a king in this restaurant and everything is really reasonably priced with them even offering a fixed price menu or £2 off any of their pizzas and pastas during happy hour (5-7pm), even the gluten free dishes!! 

Anyway, back to my low FODMAP experience! I was super excited to see the massive gluten free menu (they also have a specific dairy free and vegan menu too!) which all sounded delicious but as always, I was super nervous about onion and garlic especially considering my relatively unsuccessful reintroduction of garlic last week! 

Once I’d spent ages coming up with a million different backup meals to ask about if my favourite one wasn’t available, we began the process of ordering. Now this sounds like a daft thing to write for anyone without allergies or intolerances, but it can be a right annoyance when you’ve got lots of instructions to give the waiter. 

Anyway, the waiter came over and was immediately super helpful. When I mentioned my intolerances, he was really on the ball and asked loads of questions so that he made sure he could get it right and not give me a problem with the food I ate. 

For starter I ordered the potato skins (which aren’t gluten free due to the absence of a separate fryer, but they are fine for my gluten tolerance levels) served with mayonnaise. The original dish was served with garlic mayonnaise, but they were very accommodating with my request to have plain mayonnaise instead. I’ve not had potato skins in ages, but they were absolutely delicious, and I’ll definitely be having more as soon as I can!

For my main course, I ordered the gluten free pasta with ham hock, peas, greens, cream and parmesan. Once the waiter came back from checking with the kitchen to make 100% sure it would be safe, it turned out that the ham had been done in garlic, so they offered me chicken to replace this! I was so impressed that instead of telling me to choose a different dish and going through all of the questions again, I was offered an alternative to suit my needs.

Before ordering my main, I had also asked about the tomato sauces they use to find out if they were safe. The waiter informed me that the would be happy to make up a batch of fresh tomato sauce that was onion and garlic free but that these would be better suited to the gluten free pizzas than a pasta due to the flavour that they add to an arrabiata sauce. 

When my main came it was to die for and I’ve never seen such a big portion of pasta! I’m not usually a creamy pasta person but this was so delicious. I even asked for exactly what went in it so that I can try to make my own at home! And I wasn’t the only one. My grandparents and my mam all really enjoyed their meals too! They had pear and ham salads to start (also gluten free! But I can’t have pears) and then a lasagne, spaghetti Bolognese and a normal version of my dish!

As a gluten free dessert, you could have a panna cotta with strawberry coulis or a few different flavours of ice cream. I would have loved to try the ice cream but with such big portions I was stuffed and couldn’t manage one! There is always next time though (haha!).

This is a restaurant that I would 100% recommend to anyone who wants to visit, with or without intolerances, but I’ve never been anywhere so attentive to allergies and intolerances or anywhere so willing to offer you alternatives to suit your individual requirements. I can’t wait to go back and visit again to try out their gluten free and low fodmap pizzas! 

Thank you so much Sorella Sorella for providing an amazing meal and for being great for dealing with my dietary requirements all at a really decent price! I’ll be back soon, I promise!

I hope you guys have enjoyed reading my first restaurant review. Please do let me know if you enjoyed this blog post and if you’d like to see others like it in the future. And don’t forget to let me know if you give this restaurant a go by tagging me (@learningtolovelowfodmap) in any of your amazing food photos on Instagram.

Amy xx