Gluten-Free Dining in St Augustine: Menus and Choices

Gluten-free dining in St Augustine calls for different questions at a bakery, a food truck and a seated restaurant. Alms + Fare makes a preparation claim about its treats, while Catch 27 uses menu markings that can require changes to a dish. Arepa Life offers a filled Venezuelan arepa, and Columbia Restaurant brings its signature salad to the table.

Choose for the occasion, then discuss the complete order before committing. For coeliac needs, ingredients and kitchen handling both matter, so these four stops are choices to explore rather than a blanket safety endorsement.

Choose a meal or a bakery stop

Venue	Area	Dish to discuss	Typical food spend per person	Weekly closing day
Alms + Fare	San Marco Avenue	Chocolate chip cookie	$5–$10	Sunday
Arepa Life	Camachee Cove Yacht Harbor	Filled Venezuelan arepa	$10–$20	—
Catch 27	Charlotte Street	Grits with grilled or blackened shrimp	$25–$40	None
Columbia Restaurant	St George Street	1905 Salad	$15–$25	None

Alms + Fare suits a sweet bakery stop, Arepa Life a substantial informal bite, Catch 27 a seated seafood meal and Columbia Restaurant a tableside salad experience. The spending ranges cover the proposed food order. Larger portions, extra dishes or dessert move you towards or beyond the upper end. Allow separately for drinks, tax and table-service tips.

A dedicated gluten-free production declaration and a gluten-free menu symbol answer different questions. The former concerns where products are made, while the latter may mean a restaurant needs to alter your order. Neither replaces a conversation about your dietary needs.

For a fixed-time seated meal, arrange a reservation and explain coeliac needs when reserving and before ordering. Ask about the dish you intend to eat rather than relying on a general assurance that gluten-free options are available. Leave room to choose something else if the preparation cannot meet your needs.

Alms + Fare

Alms + Fare on San Marco Avenue is a wellness bakery offering baked goods made fresh daily. Its chocolate chip cookie makes this a straightforward sweet stop rather than a full restaurant meal, with coffee or tea available alongside it.

Alms + Fare says its treats are naturally gluten-free and made in a dedicated gluten-free facility. The bakery describes them as suitable for people with coeliac disease. This is the bakery’s own preparation statement, not an independent safety certification, and its scope is the treats rather than every item served or sold.

If you are choosing a toast, smoothie or another item alongside the cookie, discuss that item separately. A declaration about baked treats does not automatically answer questions about a different order or how it is served. Naming exactly what you want helps staff address the right ingredients and handling.

The service window suits breakfast-time or daytime refreshment rather than an after-dinner dessert stop. This is a moderately priced bakery choice, with the scale of your order changing when you add drinks or more food.

Arepa Life

Arepa Life is a family-owned food truck at Camachee Cove Yacht Harbor on Yacht Club Drive. Its filled Venezuelan arepa offers a substantial, informal food stop away from the historic centre’s seated restaurants.

An arepa is a corn-based bread, split and filled to make a meal. Discuss the filling as well as the bread when explaining your dietary needs. Corn alone does not settle the suitability of sauces, seasonings or the complete order, and shared preparation surfaces matter too.

Choose this for the food-truck format and a daytime bite rather than a lengthy tableside meal. It is a moderately priced option, with a more generous filling or an extra order increasing what you spend.

Catch 27

Catch 27 on Charlotte Street is a seafood choice with a local sourcing focus: its fish, shrimp and clams come from Florida waters and arrive fresh daily. The selection varies, giving the restaurant a reason to appeal beyond its gluten-free menu markings.

Grits, a dish made from ground maize, provide the base for the menu’s “Grits &” option. Grilled or blackened shrimp is an add-on, so name the shrimp preparation you want when discussing the complete dish. That keeps the conversation about both the base and the seafood rather than assuming one covers the other.

The dish carries the menu’s GF marking. The legend means “gluten free or can be prepared as gluten free”, so ask whether your order needs a change to be prepared gluten-free. A symbol alone does not tell you which of those two meanings applies, or how the kitchen will handle your plate.

This is mainly an evening meal choice, while Saturday’s earlier service gives you an opportunity to sit down in the afternoon. It is a moderately priced table-service restaurant, and adding a starter or dessert makes the meal more substantial than the proposed single-dish order.

Columbia Restaurant

Columbia Restaurant on St George Street offers Spanish and Cuban food, with its Original 1905 Salad tossed tableside. The preparation at your table makes the salad an experience as well as an order, and gives this seated meal its distinctive draw.

The complete 1905 Salad is not designated gluten-free on the St Augustine branch’s menus. Discuss its ingredients and preparation before choosing it. Signature status and tableside tossing do not establish dietary suitability, and removing an ingredient is a separate question from preventing cross-contact.

Explain whether you need coeliac precautions, then ask staff to address the complete salad, including its dressing and any accompaniments. If their answers do not meet your needs, choose another dish only after the same discussion rather than treating a substitution as sufficient.

The opening window allows a lunch or dinner visit. This is a moderately priced table-service choice, with extra courses changing the scale of the meal.

Gluten-free menus and kitchen handling

• Does the complete order, including sauces, dressings and accompaniments, contain gluten?
• Can clean utensils and a cleaned preparation surface be used for my order?
• Will the food touch a shared grill, griddle or other cooking surface, and what precautions can you take?
• For fried food, is the fryer shared with gluten-containing food?
• What changes does this dish need, and how will you keep the modified order separate during preparation and serving?

Say that you have coeliac needs rather than only asking for a gluten-free dish. This gives staff a reason to discuss handling as well as the recipe. Explain your needs before the kitchen begins preparing the food, not after the plate arrives.

An ingredient substitution can change a recipe, but it does not by itself address shared equipment or crumbs on a surface. Vegan and vegetarian labels concern different dietary choices and establish neither gluten-free ingredients nor coeliac handling precautions.

If staff cannot explain the handling, decline that order or choose an alternative whose preparation they can describe. A useful answer identifies what will happen to your food, rather than offering a broad reassurance. You can then decide whether those precautions meet your needs without relying on the dish’s name or label alone.

Sources & fact-checking

Checks against the sources below cover: key figures and opening hours.

• Columbia Restaurant St. Augustine Lunch Menu
• Columbia Restaurant St. Augustine Dinner Menu
• Catch 27 — opening hours
• Catch 27 — key figures
• Alms + Fare — opening hours
• Snacks & Baking Mixes – Alms + Fare – Wellness Bakery
• FAQs – Alms + Fare – Wellness Bakery