Dealing with allergic diners
For sure, there are people with allergies demanding customised meals at top restaurants.
It’s enough to drive any chef crazy. But even worse are the ones who fake allergies.
According to head chef at award-winning Asian eatery Queen Chow Patrick Friesen, these are the ones who claim they are suffering life-threatening conditions like anaphylaxis and coeliac disease when, in fact, they are simply on a diet.
He recently took to Instagram and publishing a sample of the demands his kitchen gets every night.
His post showed orders with allergy specifications asking for everything from shellfish to gluten. And there were orders of meat-based dishes — minus the meat. And the orders were just contradictory and didn’t make sense.
“Can people with dietary requirements start knowing what you can and can’t eat?” Friesen wrote.
“Shellfish allergy but loves oyster sauce. Gluten free but loves gluten as long as it’s not a piece of bread. Vegetarians that love a chicken wing. pescetarians who eat chicken.
“Sort your s... out and let your waiter know. You make it really damn hard for people with actual allergies and dietaries (requirements) to go out to eat.”
Of course, top restaurants these days offer gluten free and allergy aware dishes.
But Friesen says some of the demands are just not based on allergies. They’re fake.
“You have these people who come in on a first date and they say ‘I’m allergic to onions’ because they just don’t want to have onion breath,” Friesen told the Daily Telegraph.
“And we say ‘well, it’s an Asian restaurant, you know there are onions in pretty much everything’ ... or eschalots or onion powder or whatever. And then they say ‘oh OK it’s fine. I’ll just eat everything’. So clearly it’s not an allergy at all.
“And for the kitchen it can be torture. Especially when we have real allergies to be concerned about.”
by Leon Gettler, July 24th 2017
