Gluten Blog

Attention gluten sensitive pizza lovers in Jacksonville: Tommy’s Pizza on Southside is offering a great gluten free pizza

Before last week, it had been about three years since I actually enjoyed a pizza. Sure, I had tried a few of the frozen ones from those trendy places that sells overpriced soy products, but they were just as awful as they were expensive. I even tried to start off with a cheese pizza and add my own ingredients, and while this made the cardboard crusts a little more edible, it ended up becoming a huge project that consumed a whole bunch of money & time, and still wasn’t worth talking about or repeating.

Anyway, so I heard that Tommy’s selling a gluten free pizza so I had to try it out. They were more than happy to load up the pie with the works, so I had all my favorite favorites in one: (a few kinds of) pork, peppers, onions, olives, tomato, and cheese. They informed me that the meatballs that usually come with the Jack Murray Pie did have gluten in them, so I asked them to switch that out for some ham. No problems.

If you’re worried about cross contamination, its understandable. I normally wouldn’t eat at a place where wheat flies around daily, or I would at least ask a hundred questions and go in with some anxiety anyway. But everything I wanted to ask I was able to find out about online, and this gave me a whole lot of confidence that they understood the minutia of trying to stay gluten free. Not only do they prepare the pizzas off to the side with dedicated utensils, they’ve even got a special filter to put the crust on when its in the oven. Now, I can’t say that all those peppers and pork products didn’t give me some heartburn and drowsiness, but I definitely haven’t felt any gluten-related symptoms from two pizzas.

The price is pretty high for a small loaded pizza, but its actually not bad at all when compared to my earlier attempts of building my own pizza loaded with toppings. The price is really only bad when compared to wheat-based pizzas, so I’ve got nothing to complain about except my own picky immune system. The home version and Tommy’s version each ended up costing me about $20, but Tommy’s was delicious and ready in 20 minutes, while mine took at least an hour’s worth of cooking, some shopping time, and didn’t even taste any good. While this new treat will probably set my budget back a good bit each month, I’m finding it hard to say ‘no’ to a great hot pizza that doesn’t make me sick.