Black Voices

How a Celiac Diagnosis Led This Chicago Chef to Open a Gluten-Free Restaurant


How a Celiac Diagnosis Led This Chicago Chef to Open a Gluten-Free Restaurant

Chef and restaurant owner Chesa Rollins’ recipe for restaurant ownership began with an unusual ingredient — a diagnosis.

“I was diagnosed with celiac disease,” Rollins said. “I found out I was when I was three months pregnant, and I went to six or seven different specialists and at that time I started to lose hearing in my right ear. I was losing my hair; my vision was becoming blurry. Once you’re pregnant and you have these gluten allergies, the symptoms are escalated, and no one could tell me what was wrong with me.”

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Rollins said even after the diagnosis, she still didn’t get much guidance on how to eat without aggravating her condition.

“In the African American community, [celiac] wasn’t a prevalent diagnosis,” Rollins said. “So there was no one I could turn to to say, ‘Hey, I need help.’ And so for me, it was just a journey of exploring, you know, what to do and what not to do.”

The kitchen at Chesa’s Bistro & Bar is entirely gluten-free. (WTTW News)The kitchen at Chesa’s Bistro & Bar is entirely gluten-free. (WTTW News)

That’s when Rollins said she decided to blaze her own trail and open a gluten-free food truck — even though she was not a trained chef and had never owned a food business.

The menu at Chesa’s Gluten-Free Food Truck, which she opened in 2016, leaned toward street food like wings and tacos. When Rollins opened her Avondale dine-in spot earlier this year, she rolled out a new menu that includes foods you might not expect to find gluten-free versions of — a style of food she calls “Southern twang.”

“Southern twang is a spin on soul food, Creole-Cajun style food — fried chicken, fried catfish, fried lobster,” Rollins said. “So I tried out rice flour, potato flour, anything that you could possibly think of that was gluten-free and [waited] to see how people responded to it.”

Because the kitchen at Chesa’s Bistro & Bar is entirely gluten-free, Rollins said customers with severe allergies can dine without worrying about cross-contamination.

“When they tell me that they have a gluten allergy or they’re celiac, I’m like, ‘Welcome home,’” Rollins said. “People are crying, like, ‘I haven’t had fried chicken, I haven’t had mac and cheese in so long.’ They’re like, ‘Oh my God, I can eat anything and not have to worry about if I’m going to have an allergic reaction.’ There are a lot of places where they’ll have gluten-free options, but they don’t have a gluten-free kitchen, so there’s still the danger. Here, there’s no danger.”


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