When I walked from campus the other day around lunch time, I was feeling a bit peckish. Everyday, I either walk or cycle past Plateia and today I felt as to walk in to see what kind of gluten-free options they had. Natalie was kind to help me out and to guide me through the three different menus that they serve. She told me they regularly have celiacs in the restaurant & I was very happy to hear that! While I actually wanted to have lunch, I decided to return another time because I knew there was a homemade meal waiting for me in the fridge and I was feeling like a mess. In a few days I was about to leave the apartment behind, travel towards Argentina and on the background of it all, too much has been going on to keep my head barely floating above the water. Luckily, the kindness & warmness of Romy has helped a lot during the last weeks! Romy lent us the car from her neighbour to store some of our belongings, and afterwards we went to enjoy a nice dinner at Plateia! After talking to Natalie again, we choose to dine outside in the garden. While we were continuing some heavy conversations about the past, we didn’t take a look at the menu yet when our lovely waitress came to our table, wanting to take our orders. Though, I started asking her about the gluten-free dinner options and she mentioned she was going to check with the kitchen. It turned out the fish options, the pork chop & the lamb were gluten-free. I choose the steelhead while Romy & Arnoud both had the pork chop. Our waitress needed to check what could be adjusted for this dish garlic and onion wise. She eagerly came back to tell me that she learned something new today about the allium family and told me the tongue beans, which reminded me of ‘snijbonen’ but in a yellow variant and rhubarb could stay on the plate 🙃. They brought out the plates in this elegant way via a side table. The steelhead which resembles flavourwise to a lighter version of a salmon was perfect! The sour flavour of the yellow beans were a nice attribution that I very much enjoyed. To conclude with an insider’s tip 🙃, you don’t or even can’t tip the staff for their work because UCLA makes sure to pay them well enough that this isn’t needed!

Plateia – UCLA

Alcove – Los Feliz