Korean Or Vietnamese Food

[katyd1d]

I live in Atlanta, and off Buford highway, there is an amazing smorgasboard of restaurants with delicious traditional Asian foods, but not a lot of English. They have picture menus for us monolinguals to point at, but I don't know where to start a conversation about gluten.

I'm going to print and take with me the language cards, but in addition to that, does anyone know which dishes tend to be safer, and which are more dangerous? I love spicy seafood and seaweed dishes, and don't mind aiming for rice and avoiding rice noodles.

[TiffersAnn]

I actually lived in Korea for a year and I can tell you that most all the Korean sauces contain gluten. They use red pepper paste and bean paste in almost everything, both of which contain gluten. Bipimbap is fabulous but just have it served w/o red pepper paste. The Korean BBQs are just plain old meat grilled, usually with kimchi (which is gluten-free) and garlic... so their grilled meats are good, just don't use their dipping sauces. I used to carry my own sauces with me!

If you want spicy, go for kimchi chigae... it's a spicy soup. YUM.

[Wolicki]

Most Vietnamese dishes are gluten free. Some have hoisin sauce, which in most cases ,has gluten. I go to the Asian superstore and buy the kind with no gluten so I can still enjoy a hot bowl of Pho. Most sauces in Vietnamese cooking have fish sauce, oil, some sesame oil, lime juice. Most will understand "soy sauce." Very few of the dishes have soy sauce. I think if you take the cards in Vietnamese you will be just fine.