My partner has celiac disease.
It made me realize how broken restaurant discovery on Google Maps still is.
Yesterday, I saw Addy Osmani, Director of Google Cloud AI, announce Google Maps’ biggest upgrade in over a decade, powered by Gemini.
You can now ask things like “Where can I charge my phone nearby without waiting in line?” or “Is there a public tennis court with lights on that I can play at tonight?”. Pretty impressive.
This new “Ask Maps” feature starts rolling out now in the U.S. and India on Android and iOS, with desktop coming soon.
I can’t wait for it to be released in Europe to test it and see how much of a solution it can be. There are everyday problems that remain surprisingly unsolved.
Finding a celiac-safe restaurant is one of them.
Right now, there’s no filter on Google Maps to find gluten-free restaurants.
To work around this, you basically have two options. Either you type “gluten free” in the search bar, hoping people have mentioned it in their reviews, or you go through a process that usually looks like this:
- Search for restaurants
- Select one
- Open their menu
- Check if it mentions gluten-free options
Minus one point for restaurants that only write “for gluten-free options, please ask”, which sadly isn’t helpful when browsing online.
If the restaurant offers gluten-free options, that’s great for people who choose to eat gluten free or for people who are gluten-intolerant. Unfortunately, for someone with celiac disease, that’s not enough.
A dish can be “gluten-free” on paper but still contain traces of gluten due to cross-contact. For example, fries cooked in the same fryer as breaded food, or sushi prepared on the same surface as gluten-containing ingredients.
So in practice, the real process is much longer:
- Call the restaurant to ask if and how they handle gluten-free options
- Dig through reviews
- Check the restaurant on niche apps such as Find Me Gluten Free, where people confirm things like separate fryers or safe preparation environments
And once you’ve found somewhere to go, the line of questioning begins again when you arrive at the restaurant.
It’s an incredible amount of effort for something that should be simple.
For people with celiac, eating out demands vigilance and planning, often leaving them feeling like a burden and turning one of our most fundamental ways of bonding with loved ones, sharing a meal, into a stressful and calculated experience.
Two small product ideas could make a huge difference:
- A “Gluten-Free Friendly” badge for restaurants that offer gluten-free options
- A “Celiac-Safe” badge for restaurants that guarantee safe preparation
Both would be searchable and filterable directly from Google Maps.
One more UX detail that would help a lot: when you create a list in Google Maps, for example a list of gluten-free restaurants, you can see them on the map, but you can’t filter that list by “Open now”. That filter only works for general search results, not your own lists. Being able to filter saved lists by “Open now” would make the whole search process much easier.
Implementing these changes would have a massive impact.
Moving forward, how great would it be to be able to ask Gemini questions like “What’s the closest celiac-safe restaurant?”. For the millions of people with celiac disease, that question alone would change how they experience eating out.
We’ve seen Google Maps becoming more inclusive with badges such as “Vegetarian” or “Vegan”. It’s time to bring food intolerances, allergies, and autoimmune conditions into the discussion, and reduce friction for everyone.