Pub chef refusing to cook for allergies

[Allergyissue87]

Very odd experience yesterday, my son has a nut allergy and we eat out once or twice a month. Generally we get shown an allergy folder or directed to an app to check and given a quick warning about cross contamination and all fine. I know the level of his allergy and am happy to take a small risk of cross contamination etc, otherwise he could never have a meal out.
Yesterday we went to a chain pub, have been before with no issues, asked if we had any allergies, told the woman at the till yes a nut allergy, we've checked the allergen info and happy with risk of cross of contamination etc. All fine, ordered, paid and sat down with our drinks.
Then about 20 minutes later a chef came to the table to tell us he can't cook for us as there is an allergy and our order shouldnt have been taken. I was really confused, wondered if it was a new chef etc, I explained I'd checked the allergy info on their website, it doesn't contain any allergens and I'm aware of the small possibility of cross contamination but not an issue for his level of allergy, and he's eaten it before and all fine. But no, he was adamant he cannot serve food due to this allergy, he was apparently the kitchen manager and would not risk making a child ill, couldn't explain further than that and went back to the kitchen.
I went back up to the bar and asked for the manager, a young assistant manager gave me a full refund and apologised but still couldn't give me a real explanation.

I'll most likely complain through their online form as we wasted about an hour by the time we had got our refund and left, with 2 hungry children, and my son who now doesn't want to eat anything not homemade as 'the man said I'll get ill'.
Am I being unreasonable to expect to be served?

To clarify if my son ate a nut, or something containing nuts he would be unwell and need an epipen, but has been fine with previous incidents of his food touching nut-containing food etc and there wasn't actually anything containing nuts on the pub menu.

Chef looks out and gets concerned about ut a childs health and safety and says so all of sudden chef bad person mother isnt to concerned about childs health and safety and is good person
Really

I'd take this to mean the food is not freshly prepared, so he can't be sure it doesn't contain nuts and wants to protect your child. However can't open state this, without getting in trouble. Lots of kitchens reheat food prepared offsite.

Inconvenient, yes. Right thing to do, yes.

So personally I don't think he was being unreasonable, he was looking out for your kid.

Is it possible this chef has been involved in a previous allergy incident and left with anxiety / guilt / trauma and is being extremely cautious as a result?

I was curious on the law so looked this up and anaphylaxis.org.uk had this to say on their eating out page:

"Food businesses aren’t obliged by law to serve you or to sell you anything if they don’t want to, so it’s possible that they may say they’re unable to provide any safe food for you."

The same page also encourages allergy sufferers to exercise extreme caution, advising people to not eat anything from a restaurant if they realise they have left their adrenaline injector at home and to refuse to eat somewhere where the staff seem uncertain about allergies/their ability to cater for them.

You need to put in a complaint. The chef may very well be right and it wasn't safe but something has gone wrong somewhere as the front of house staff weren't aware that they couldn't serve people with nut allergies. Your son has previously eaten there, you have presumably been given advice by the allergy clinic on what is safe and you are happy to accept the small risk. A lot of places have to tell you the risks in multiple ways and I have even been places where you have to tick an electronic box to say you agree with their allergy statement (they hand you an Ipad). All staff need to be aware of the same things however. Believe me, having been on both sides of this, it can drive you round the twist.

This. What sort of life would you have if you never ate out. .How can you travel or go on holiday. There is an awful lot of misinformation on this thread about the realities of living with a nut allergy. We have a son with a nut allergy and manage fine. It is about managing risk and the chef in the restaurant in this situation either has no experience in this or had come into such a chaotic kitchen that frankly no one should be eating there.

If you are so sure there is no
risk, then don’t mention the allergy.
By stating it you are making the restaurant responsible . I think the chef did the right thing; he is unwilling to damage your child’s health. You should be grateful.

Well I wonder how much trade has been lost because some won't go the extra yard.

You realise there are plenty of people who don't holiday, travel or eat out? Severe allergies are not the preserve of those with disposable income. Eating out is a privilege, as are holidays.

Ironically, a treat for folk who can't do these things is something like McDonald's which, as pp have already said, is a bloody good option.

I do agree that the chef didn't want to take the risk however I still voted not being unreasonable. There's so many allergies now and a nut allergy is up there as being common, you'd think these days kitchens would have a designanted area so cross contamination doesn't occur and food can be prepared and cooked safely for allergy suffering customers. I think it could have been handled differently so if that's the premise for you to complain then definitely go for it, but the chef not wanting to take the risk is a bonus for you and your child.

This.

It's SO hard to get people to understand what a dairy allergy is or that a Soy allergy can be as serious as a nut allergy.

My child is allergic to Dairy, soy and nuts. Nuts is their least reactive allergen. Dairy hospitalises them. Yet I've still had restaurants offer lactose free alternatives cause they don't grasp that's a completely different allergy

I think it could have been handled better but obviously the chef wasn't comfortable for whatever reason to safely serve your child food and I would take his health as priority first. I think it's polite that he came out himself to explain the change. There could have been a change in ingredients/suppliers which hadn't been noted yet. There's a lot of paperwork involved in checking allergens. Perhaps there had been an incident involving someone with an allergy recently and they wanted to check all their procedures and ingredients. Better safe than sorry

This is a thing now with precautions being much more serious. My son has a similar level of allergy to certain nuts and egg but when restaurants ask at the beginning if there are any allergies in the group I say he just has intolerances rather than allergies, as if you say allergies they give you much more restricted options or sometimes say they can't serve you.

Has he been prescribed an epipen @mswales?
If so, that's a risky stategy you're taking. The chef upthread is probably having palpitations!

I mean, you might get away with it, but you're taking a risk.

To me, that's a bit like saying that as not everyone has the privilege of attending university, why put in place strategies to help those who do but have, say, dyslexia or dyspraxia.

Saying people with allergies should be able to eat out safely, or those with dyslexia need assistance, doesn't mean we shouldn't all be fighting against poverty and for a more equal society too.

Eating out isn't always a treat anyway. Sometimes it's a neccessity. Travel is often on business, not for pleasure. But people should be able to eat out safely despite having a medical condition in any situation. Feeling guilty because others can't is an entirely separate issue.

Yes, it is a frustrating and annoying scenario, but I understand both sides or the situation. The chef was clearly not comfortable taking the risk of harming your son. This is more of a shortcoming of the chain itself which should train their staff better at dealing with these situations.

My wife recently developed several food allergies, mainly from Gluten, but she also can get reactions from Wheat, Soy and possibly one or two other groups we are yet to determine. We are still exploring it, but we have a robust understanding of what tends to be OK and what doesn't. This rules out many chain or takeaway restuarants, although we still use some. The worst reaction she can get is similar to food poisoning; cold sweats, dizzy, nausious, diarrhea and headaches all in quick succession if she ate too much of a bad thing. She understands the level of her allergy, like you do your son's, and she takes calculated risks when she fancies something and is confident she can deal with the side effects. Each time this happens, her understanding of the her allergy grows.

We went on holiday recently and she was declaring her allergy and we started to notice the massive difference between how various businesses deal with the issue. Some had no clue whatsoever, others had handouts and a few had entire Gluten free menus. As we were on holiday and eating out every day, we had a succession of head chefs coming to our table to discuss what they can cook Gluten free. Whilst all were ironcally very good and created bespoke things not on the menu for my wife, she found it very embarrassing for getting all this attention. So now, she never declares her allergy and simply uses her own knowledge to order food.

From what you have said, if you understand the level of allergy and you have a good grasp of what contains nuts and what doesn't, you may be best off considering not declaring the allergy and simply using your own judgement. If you have an epipen and are 100% confident you can safely deal with an allergy related episode, then why go to the hassle of highlighting it and having the same issue repeated? It doesn't sound like your son's nut allergy is of the most serious I have heard of and that your are comfortable with the slight risk risk of cross contamination, so perhaps just use your own knowledge about foods that are OK and assume that everything has a slight risk of cross contamination.

I find many of these chain businesses are still unequiped and the staff untrained to fully understand allergens, which is highlighted by your unfortunate experience. Many places are good, don't get me wrong but many are also clueless.

Annoying it might be, but at the end of the day it's the pubs decision, they are under zero obligation to serve anyone.

It's probably a combination of liability and to some degree cost. Hope you can find somewhere else that works for you and is happy with the risk and your money.

Then he should have said so rather than just saying 'I won't' with no explanation.

Even if he didn't want to say 'The kitchen is filthy' he could have said there had been a 'contamination issue' in the kitchen and it wasn't safe. But if the kitchen was truly in 'a state' why would he have wanted to cook anybody's meals in it?

I agree with the chef, regardless of what the chain say, he wasn't convinced there wasn't a risk of coming into contact with nuts. He should know considering he is the one cooking the food, not some woman at the till! He was being responsible.

I think there are two different factors here:

1. How to get the right balance of risk for the person with allergies
2. Who should be blamed if things go wrong

For 1) I think it depends on the severity of the allergy and getting a sensible risk balance. In the OP's case her son shouldn't eat actual nuts but is not in danger from a tiny trace. So if it was just a case of the chef not being able to guarantee every ingredient is nut free, then eating the pizza in the restaurant would be no more dangerous for him than eating a similar pizza at home that OP bought from Asda. So from that point of view it seems sensible to let him have the restaurant pizza as long as OP understands they can't guarantee about factory conditions etc.

For 2) I think in the above scenario it would be unfair to blame the chef or restaurant if one of the factories had handled nuts and the OP's son did get ill. Which may need a brief disclaimer from the OP to say she is happy with this. Whereas it probably would be fair to blame the restaurant if they forgot about the allergy and chucked some nuts in the food.

I guess we need to find a middle ground where the chef etc is not at personal risk of blame, as long as they've explained what they can or can't guarantee. I still think it's madness if we get to a point where anyone with any kind of allergy can't eat out anywhere ever.

I don't blame him. I used to work in retail and catering and hospitality and things like that were the bain of my life. It's not everyone else problem that Tarquin is allergic to everything. Allergies are just another in vogue thing for parents who think its everyone else's job to take up for their little darlings.

OP! One of the elements of anaphylaxis is the unpredictable nature of the allergy! If your child has an epipen then they are at risk. They can go from a slightly itchy mouth to full blown about to die over the course of a single exposure. I really feel that you should be researching this a little better! Epipens cost the NHS a LOT of money and become outdated fairly quickly. Your GP is very unlikely to have prescribed an epipen without a serious concern!

You might want to educate yourself @Akrong.
You're coming across as very stupid unfortunately.

If you have an epipen and are 100% confident you can safely deal with an allergy related episode, then why go to the hassle of highlighting it and having the same issue repeated?

This is terrible advice @DJhowzy.
An epipen is there to use in an emergency situation if everything else goes wrong.
And unfortunately they don't always prevent a fatality, even when administered in a timely fashion.

Oh no. I speak for everyone in catering and hospitality when I say we are sick of it.