This Burger Chain Offers The Ultimate Gluten-Free Fast Food Options

Eating out at any restaurant on a gluten-free diet is tricky business. Even with the little leaf icons next to menu items or other diet-friendly efforts, it can be difficult to decipher the level of understanding your server has around gluten-free ingredients and cross-contamination. Gluten sneaks into restaurant food through soy sauce marinades, house dressing recipes, and shared cookware. Some places are educated enough to label potential sources of cross-contamination and gluten-containing ingredients in their dishes. Taco Bell advertises a few options that can be made gluten-free, but doesn't advise that its food is safe for celiacs. Others, like McDonald's, top the list of fast food chains you should avoid if you're gluten-free because nothing on its menu is free from gluten.

At burger chains, you must watch out for cross-contamination from hamburger buns or any in-house baking. But you really have to worry about the fries. You never know when a batch of fries has been coated in flour before freezing. Even more common is a batch of gluten-free French fries bathed in the same oil fryer as everything else, cross-contaminating them with gluten as they fry. A dedicated gluten-free fryer is a coveted item in the gluten-free restaurant community. Wendy's fries aren't 100% gluten-free, for instance, because they don't have a dedicated, allergen-free fryer. There is one prolific burger joint that does have a dedicated gluten-free fryer, though, and that's Five Guys.

A dedicated gluten-free fryer is just one of the reasons why the gluten-free menu at Five Guys is the ultimate fast food option for those on a gluten-free diet. For starters, the only menu items in America that contain gluten are the buns and the malt vinegar fry condiment. In the U.K., the HP sauce contains gluten, and in Canada, the hot dogs contain gluten.

Five Guys slings freshly made hamburgers, hot dogs, and French fries made-to-order and are gluten-free, and you can have as many toppings as you want on your meal. The ability to build a burger or hot dog yourself without extra charges makes ordering a gluten-free meal much easier. Toppings at Five Guys include the regulars like hand-chopped onions, sweet and sour relish, French's mustard, and Heinz ketchup, both of which are always gluten-free. There are also options like jalapeño peppers and various sauces to choose from. Five Guys doesn't have gluten-free bun substitutes for its burgers or hotdogs, but it does have large leaf lettuce to put your burger in a lettuce wrap.