I recently came across a wonderful site called The Celiac Scene that has a guide to gluten free and celiac friendly restaurants across Canada. The search is very simple and extremely well done. The ability to breakout a city search into districts as well as see an overview at the city and province level is great. The results are uniquely presented with an integrated map and has the restaurants in a grid below. This isn’t a restaurant dump of every Outback Steakhouse and Wendy’s, but rather a carefully curated resource selected “by celiacs, for celiacs”. This level of detail is really unprecendented in US directories on the scale that is being done on this site. We do have some fine localized directories in the US, but, again, none at this scale and with this ease of use.

The US is not left out. We get a well laid out table of 100 GF friendly chain restaurants across the country. The list of printable and available as an RSS feed.

As if this weren’t enough, there are plenty of other resources and reviews as well as the events they sponsor, like the recent Gluten Free Expo in Vancouver. Their Celiac Facts section is also worth a visit.

Another thing that is very refreshing about The Celiac Scene is their design. Sure, there is advertising, but it is tasteful and integrated. There is nothing garish or jarring about the ads. They serve their purpose well. A pet peeve of mine is site owners who manage their articles and comments with an iron fist, yet allow simply awful ads.

I can say that if I could get Gluten Free City to be in the same class as The Celiac Scene I would be very happy, indeed.