Vegan given butter in restaurant

[Loveanavocado]

Went out for dinner this evening with dd’s.
dd1 has been a vegan for years. The rest of us are vegetarian, although I’m verging on veganism too tbh.

we went for dinner this evening, to our local. We often eat here and know the staff really well. So they know our dietary requirements.

this evening we ordered a dish and were all eating it. The waitress came over laughing and told us it had butter in it!!

dd1 was horrified and began to get upset. The waitress took the dish away and went to the kitchen. She returned and said “the kitchen are making another but they’ve got cross with me and asked why I told you it had butter in it!’

this has infuriated me!! Firstly given butter when told vegan. But even worse..told by the waitress that the kitchen would’ve not told the customer it had butter in it!!

AIBU?? What if dd had an allergy????

my dd2 has severe allergies (has had anaphylaxis a few times now!) so how am I ever going to trust them now??

I don’t know what to do! I don’t want to make a fuss as it’s our local in a very insular community

Now you know it probably never had been.

If you don't want to make a fuss then vote with your feet. You can't trust them now

If vegans stopped whinging so much and weren’t so sanctimonious then people would take them more seriously.

I’m sure there are some less than pleasant vegans as there are in all groups of people, but to say that because you don’t like the behaviours of some vegans, you can’t give a mature response to something like this happening shows you in a far worse light.

There’s a couple of posters on here than I recognise the usernames of, who are meat eaters and go on any thread about vegetarians/vegans/reducing meat for health or the planet, who are very ‘in your face’ about eating meat. They come across badly. Should all meat eaters be judged on those posters? I don’t think so and hope people have the maturity to not judge everyone on their behaviour.

Thd restaurant staff provided a poor service and were unprofessional. They should have apologised and taken the matter seriously. Mistakes happen but they should be handled properly, not with lies and covering them up.

I'm not vegan but my husband is. I don't want to be vegan.

I would make a complaint. It's very disrespectful for them to laugh and then try and cover it up.

I eat meat. However, I don't understand why people on here are so anti-vegan? Why so much hatred for someone who is against killing and eating a living thing and who wants to save the environment? What's wrong with that?

You'd think the hatred would be for those who want an animal killed for their dinner!

If you have a dairy allergy, which might be triggered by cross contamination, you need to tell the staff each and every time.

The Vegan Society is absolutely fine with products that 'may contain' milk and egg being labelled vegan, but for someone with a severe allergy they may still have an allergic reaction to such an item.
https://www.vegansociety.com/news/blog/TM2021/allergen-vs-vegan-labelling

Lactose intolerance - you probably don't need to tell staff as it will take a significant amount of dairy to produce a reaction - but you should probably tell the staff anyway.

I don't love veganism because I feel like it's wrecked vegetarianism.

Every time I go to choose a nice veggie dish, it's been replaced by a vegan option (on the basis that both vegetarians and vegans should be able to eat the same thing) and it's full of fake things that I'm allergic to.

If you have a dairy allergy, which might be triggered by cross contamination, you need to tell the staff each and every time.

It's also possible to have a dairy allergy that is not triggered by crosscontamination. If I'm ordering the vegan option I often don't bother going into the allergy issue because it doesn't matter if they make my dish next to the cheeseboard and it always turns into a long discussion 'allergy - no, not that type of allergy - no, more than an intolerance- no, not a preference - you don't have to sterilise the whole kitchen just don't butter the bread'. 'Vegan' is quicker. But even a small amount as an actual ingredient - a slice of bread with milk powder in, a teaspoon of butter on the pasta has consequences for weeks.

But we don't know that the dish was actually advertised as vegan @Xmasbaby11. I've asked the OP to clarify this but as yet she has not done so.

If it was advertised as a vegan dish then it should 100% be vegan but if it was advertised as vegetarian and a substitution makes it vegan (eg veggie pasta which is normally made with fresh egg pasta is instead made with dried pasta to make it vegan or a "regular" cheese based sauce is subbed for a vegan cheese based sauce instead) then whilst every effort should have been made to ensure it was vegan there is always a possibility of miscommunication/genuine error in the kitchen.

Literally, the only whinging on this thread is from the non vegans, like you.

Bunbuns3 - I’m not sure if you have read this thread properly but I DO have life threatening allergies! Not to butter I admit. But my concern was..if the ‘why did you tell the customer’ comment would be used among other meals made. I do know that the same restaurant has overlooked food ALLERGIES the last couple of weeks. It’s a concern. Not specifically about the butter, but about allergies.
so please don’t patronise me. I’ve watched my daughter in hdu following food allergies..I don’t need lecturing over such thank you

If you feel their practices on food safety has declined, other than your most recent visit, then you would be perfectly reasonable to bypass management and go to environmental health. Poor food handling practices are unacceptable, it's a very basic requirement for the industry and those failing safety standards deserve to be monitored.

Some vegans I know would find consuming any animal products just as painful and horrible (but mentally rather than physically) as other people find physical pain and sickness from suffering from allergic reactions to eating certain foodstuffs
Really? You think your hurty feelz are in any way comparable to an actual medical illness which could be fatal? Pissing myself laughing at this nonsense 😂

You still haven't said if your daughter's meal was advertised as vegan on the menu. Why are you avoiding this, I wonder 🤔

I don't believe this actually even happened

That is really bad. People who work with food should be shit hot on not serving a vegan butter. It could have had disastrous consequences. I would complain to the manager this shouldn't have happened. The attitude of the staff was disgusting.

And if you have had to administer epipens regularly to dd2 then butter in a vegans food is incomparable imo

What did the menu say regarding vegetarian/vegan? Did you explicitly say at time of ordering that your daughter didn't each any dairy? Saying you go regularly and they know your requirements isn't enough you need to say it every time (people forget they (hopefully) have lots of regular customers!)

A lot of people, myself included, order vegan when out as you know there's no egg or milk in it (cant eat either)
You can't just piss about with allergens in food and laugh about it.
Next person to order might become ill as a result.

Hurty feelz? Are you 5?

@Ohmych

what disastrous consequences

But we don't know that the dish was advertised as being vegan, we just know that the restaurant has made it vegan in the past.

If it's advertised as vegan then it should be vegan but if it's not advertised as vegan then there is always the possibility of an error or genuine mistake made with regards to the substitution

What is the OP hiding? They came back and answered one post. But will NOT answer the literally dozens of people asking if the dish was labelled vegan.

I'm beginning to think this isn't real same as TriggeredByGravy.

The point here isn't really (although not well communicated) about veganism equating with allergies. The point is, the dish had been made a certain way to accommodate a customer's needs. Whether it appeared on the menu described as vegan or not. The same dish, ordered by a known customer with a known dietary specification was then not made to that specification and staff laughed.
Presumably not everyone tells wait staff every minute detail of any reasons for dietary issues? For example, someone may be dairy intolerant [and so have a violent unpleasant gastric reaction, rather than an anaphylactic shock response]. If they ordered vegan food to accommodate this, they wouldn't expect butter or cheese.
If OP had ordered vegetarian food options and complained about butter then I would understand the staff reaction.

Staff training should cover asking customer's if there are any allergies or dietary preferences, and, if customers order outside those parameters, advising them. E.g. I might order vegan as I dislike cheese and am vegetarian. If I then asked for chocolate mousse which contained milk, I'd expect that to be pointed out to me, as a way of ensuring I was aware.

What does it matter how the dish was labelled? Even if it was vegetarian there was clearly an option to alter it and make vegan. If the restaurant offers to make it vegan it should be vegan.

I'll get absolutely flamed for this but back in my waitress days I once accidentally served a vegan customer a dessert that I was then told wasn't actually vegan

I kept my mouth shut🤐

This makes no sense. Whether the dish was advertised as vegan or the customer asked for it to be made vegan (and the waiter agreed) is not a fundamental difference. (Unless the menu / waiter clearly states that the dish is exactly the same except for this one substitution, but then they can't mention the word vegan). In both cases the customer has not received what they ordered and what they expected. Of course, this is probably due to an error but from the customer's point of view again it makes no difference whether the error was made on the menu, by the waiter or by the kitchen.

I don't think anyone doubts that this was a genuine error but 1. If they tend to make so many errors then someone with a severe allergy is not safe in that restaurant and 2. They obviously don't take it very seriously so again someone with an allergy is not safe there.