Heaping plates of gluten-free pasta at Casa d’Italia.Somewhere there has got to be a requirement in print stating that if you list “gluten-free” on your menu, you must subsequently educate your staff at a basic level about what gluten is. It just seems logical. And yet so incredibly neglected. Then again, some forms of food weren’t ever intended to be gluten-free, so I can understand the illogical treatment of something illogical. Take gluten-free pasta, for example. Pasta is about as far from gluten-free as you can get in concept. Strips of cooked wheat flour hardly seem like a reasonable candidate for gluten-free diet inclusion. And yet, as evidenced by the menu at a place like Casa d’Italia in Ravenna, Italian restaurants and commercial pasta producers lead the charge in striving to provide options free of gluten.I am convinced that the reason for this seeming paradox is simple. When it comes to food, Italians are not complicated people; they simply can’t abide the idea of somebody being excluded from a family dinner. The solution is to find something they can eat. And thus Italian restaurants have become one of the most likely ethnic restaurants to carry gluten-free options.Last night, I was in the mood for some Italian-style “soul food” . . . crowded dining, Pavarotti in the background, and a menu drenched in red sauces, garlic, and olive oil. So off to Casa d’Italia I went. Although my first visit there, it was instantly comfortable. Families and couples were packed around tables in the tiny room, and I found myself immediately seated next to the wine rack, in such a way that the waiter wouldn’t quite trip over me when coming around the corner, as long as he remembered to dodge. It was like sitting down in a family kitchen and dining area on a holiday: a little haphazard and crowded, wine and conversation both flowing freely, and everyone focused on food.This is what a wine refill should look like.The menu was short, but the board filled with the day’s specials was overwhelmingly long. It took several rounds of 20 Questions, but I eventually ordered pasta with antelope, having ascertained that it was one of the few items that were, almost certainly, completely gluten-free. Antelope, it turns out, tastes a lot like venison, and goes very nicely with a hearty marinara sauce and gluten-free noodles. The giant helping brought to the table was so good it didn’t even require a to-go box.The fact is that there are many excellent gluten-free pastas on the market today. But as a menu such as Casa d’Italia’s demonstrates, they are not always served with a detailed understanding of what gluten is. Gluten-free pasta is pointless if the sauce put on it isn’t gluten-free, for example. And Casa d’Italia is full of opportunities for misunderstandings such as that. However, anything the staff may lack in knowledge, they make up for in service. Sending them back to the kitchen to ask questions, requesting changes, and generally being picky about knowing exactly what was in all my food didn’t even faze their smiles. They were beyond accommodating. Some days, you just need a bowl of pasta. Fact. But if you’re gluten-free, remember: Always ask, ask, and double-ask about contents of the dish aside from the noodles. And once you’ve done that, find a different way to phrase the question and ask one more time, just to be sure. Even if the waiter ends up hating you, at least your body won’t.Follow Voracious on Twitter and Facebook.