One of my children has non immediate food allergies. Symptoms are with 48 hours and are gastrointestinal and impacting the immune system, it often looks like they've come down with a cold. Not fatal but not nice for my child to be in pain. The other, I am breastfeeding and it's suspected for them too so I've cut out these allergens myself.
We went to a restaurant recently and I asked for their allergen menu. I was told to look it up on their website but that I'm ordering according to the allergen menu and it's down to me to choose so it's my own risk. I couldn't get it to work on my phone so I asked for a hard copy or their own device to use. They are put out at me asking but they do bring it over.
We ordered and after we ate there, I realised they hadn't asked who had the allergies so they couldn't possibly know how many and which dishes to cook separately. There was no distinction when the dishes arrived either. It was my own fault for not realising, I would have usually picked up on it but I was sleep deprived at the time. I've been thinking about it and noticed we often haven't been asked about allergies or it's not been distinguished between dishes when they come to the table. Although all apart from this and one restaurant after this - which we left - have asked who had the allergens.
Surely they're not taking it seriously and could make someone seriously ill?
Does anyone who works in a restaurant know what the very basic protocols are? For example, my child loves Nandos and when they come over, they ask about allergies and who has them as they are cooked on a separate section. When the plates arrive, they have flags in denoting the allergens for that plate. Other places have different coloured plates. Is that basic standard practice and other places are lapse or are these places going above and beyond?