Would you have eaten the pudding?

[NoSourDough]

I have celiac disease and just a few crumbs of gluten will cause at lease 3 weeks of damage and illness for me, so eating out means I have to be very careful.

I’m on holiday in a UK destination, gone to a hotel restaurant, made it clear I have celiac disease, asked for the gluten free menu.

Main course, all is well.

Pudding time, I ask for a gluten free Sticky Toffee Pudding. DH asks for a normal one but with vegan ice cream (he is lactose intolerant).

A different waitress brings both puddings out, both in the same coloured bowls and is temporarily perplexed with regard to which one has the vegan ice cream.

i make it clear that one should be gluten free. She disappears and comes back and gives me the one that she says is gluten free.

We start eating, DH tastes his and says his ice creams tastes normal and not vegan.

i have a mouthful of pudding and spit it out - fearing that I’ve actually got the gluten pudding.

I decide not to eat mine as I cannot take the risk.

When waitress returns, I explain my dilemma, that I cannot take the risk and I want the pudding taken off the bill.

I couldn’t believe her reaction. She spoke to her manager, and said “it was 100% gluten free” with such an attitude and as I went to answer, she walked off.

They did take off the pudding on the bill but it was the fact they didn’t take it seriously and that it felt I was making a fuss about nothing. Why they didn’t put the food in separate coloured bowls or flag it is beyond me.

i did want to speak to the manager but it was mayhem outside in reception and I just wanted to leave. I will be leaving a review online.

Of course she should still leave a review, the review is to highlight to other people that the restaurant couldn't confirm that her dessert was gluten free, so she couldn't eat it. It lets other coeliacs know to either avoid or proceed with caution. This is exactly the type of information that I need people to share when I'm choosing places to eat with my DS.

Both puddings were probably gluten free which is why the chef was so confident. I would be very surprised if a restaurant would have the capacity to offer both. That should have been explained if it was the case.

How were you after having a mouthful and spitting it out? If you have coeliacs and didn’t have a reaction then it almost certainly was gluten free.
ETA I don’t blame you for being cautious though! I probably wouldn’t have eaten it.

I declined food in a restaurant today. I'm highly sensitive to carrot, not good with dairy and I'm vegetarian. The menu had a mushroom & lentil burger option marked as vegan. Having been caught out before with 'hidden' carrot, I asked if they could confirm it didn't have carrot in the blend.
Turns out they couldn't, the chef didn't know the full ingredients list, and the burger wasn't on their allergens menu (which should contain details of all menu items). On that basis I also declined the butternut squash soup and the 3 bean chilli as I couldn't stomach - literally- eating something I would have a violent reaction to.

The restaurant did confirm it was gluten free. The op just didn’t feel confident enough to eat it.

I’ve had a restaurant tell me my meal was gf after bringing me out a salad full of croutons before and guess what? They’d (badly) picked them out when I sent it back. This was after me choosing from the gf menu and having it confirmed to be gf. Sorry, after the earlier confusion there is no way I’d eat it!

I can understand you not wanting to eat it OP. My son has multiple food allergies and if there's any uncertainty about what he is being served I'd rather just go home than take any risk. I think you do get a gut feeling about whether a particular establishment has a good understanding of and practices around dietary requirements. If the staff are confident and are clearly following a procedure they understand when they take the order and serve the food it gives me confidence but if the server is vague and says things like "I think so" or "probably" when asked about ingredients I've got a fairly low threshold for leaving! "Probably" isn't good enough when eating something can make you seriously ill or worse and it's perfectly reasonable to not want to confirm your doubts by eating something suspect. Obviously when you have things like allergies or coeliac there is always some risk when you eat out - it's very difficult to totally eliminate the risk of cross contamination even in kitchens who take it very seriously. But when you are getting the feeling that the staff aren't clear about what they're doing or don't understand the risk then I think most people with significant dietary needs would decide the risk was too great.

Unfortunately you get this kind of stupidity everywhere now OP. It's like a modern disease of no common sense. It's actually playing with people's lives.

What?? When the waitress wasn't even sure which was which?
Of course she couldn't risk eating it.

Presumably the chef will have prepared, cooked and served both desserts which is the reason he/she will know the ingredients of each!

Good restaurants will then serve the gf item separately, often with a flag as stated above to make absolutely sure that there’s no chance of mixup between the kitchen and the table.
It gives me a lot more confidence in what I’m eating if a restaurant has a system such as the above: I know then they take it seriously.

I am that waitress, as in that is my job.

I stepped back from management to front of house.

Where I am if there are two chefs on they would take a ticket each, each would get a seperate flag and each would be sent out seperately.

If not two chefs then I would explain that due to the need to clean down between preps, there will be a delay between pudding one and pudding two. So the GF pudding would be made and sent, then clean down, then LF pudding made and sent. FOH would do full hand wash and in between too.

This place sounds like somewhere no one with any dietary issues should eat, so go to town on that review.

Also coeliac and unwilling to spend the rest of my holiday on the toilet in agony.

I remember arguing with a coffee shop owner when I asked if she offered any gluten free options. I was not expecting a yes, I was simply (very politely) asking. Oh these cookies are low gluten she said. Er, no, that's not a thing. I pointed out that she's not a medical expert, that there is no such measurement as "low gluten" and that I cannot tolerate any gluten at all so she needs to either say "No, we have no gluten free options" or just offer some. She tried to keep arguing, I did not allow her to win that argument and of course I never returned and did post about it on a Google review - where she also tried to argue and really made an arse of herself.

Some people are incredibly dimwitted and choose to believe it's just like a mild food intolerance, you might get a sore tum or a bit of diarrhoea and then are fine. if I eat gluten, I have to go to bed to recover, I sleep for ages but it is not refreshing, it's the sleep of a sick person, and the next day I feel like I have been poisoned. Even my voice changes with gluten because of the inflammation that kicks in.

People are often idiots, but a restaurant should know better. You were right and they were wrong.

Sticky toffee pudding is full of dairy though isn't it? Normal one is, toffee is basically caramelised dairy and there would be butter in the sponge.

If your DH asked for vegan ice cream, did they give him vegan pudding too? And had maybe just done a free from everything one so you both had the same?

I don't think a bad review is necessary just clearly stating facts.

The place was nice, food was lovely. Confusion over vegan ice cream (ordered due to intolerance) but absolutely no awarenesses of food safety for allergens.

I'm sorry this happened, I'm glad you didn't eat it or pay for it. They need to do better. I would hope a chef would want to label the food to ensure all the care they take in preparation of your meal ensures it makes it safely to you to enjoy

I honestly feel your pain - it’s exhausting. You have to be so careful with any food type sensitivity, allergen, or autoimmune disease.

He is fine with dairy cooked into food. His worst case scenario is fresh milk.

Fellow coeliac here - I definitely wouldn't have eaten the pudding! What shit allergen control processes that restaurant has. Not safe for anyone.

Being poisoned is a good way of describing it, it’s exactly that.

Your example reminds me of a recent conversation with a burger van vendor at Wembley (Oasis concert). I had to have the celiac conversation. She asked me “how severe” my celiac disease is, like it made a difference in terms of ingestion. I tried to explain to her, you either have it, or you don’t, and a crumb will be enough for my tissue to begin attacking itself.

Thank you!

That’s horrific!!

It’s likely that they didn’t actually have 2 separate sticky toffee puddings, but that their sticky toffee pudding is just GF. Often they’re presented differently on menus (no GF on the the normal menu and GF on the gluten free menu for example) but are actually the same pudding.

That doesn’t mean I’d have done things any differently though - I don’t eat (or even order if something gives me the wobbles pre ordering) anywhere where I don’t have total confidence.

But lack of distinctive marking for the GF bowl and the fact she did take it back and the kitchen did ‘know’ it was GF (added to the unlikeliness of them actually having a GF and non GF version of the same cake) suggests both are actually GF.

(I have coeliac too)

I think the intolerance brigade have caused this sort of issue. Yours is a very serious autoimmune response, but so many people now claim to have vague issues with certain things that your concern is diluted.

I had a place do this with a bun (I was supposed to have bunless - I even specifically asked when they returned it far too quickly if that’s what they’d done and explained why it was so important that it was made fresh). It was at an airport a couple of days before Christmas and I was so ill. That was the last time I trusted staff and since then I’ve gone with my ‘spidey senses’ - ie they said all the right things but deep down I knew it came back too fast. Anything feels weird now, I just won’t eat.

You couldn’t take the risk when the staff member seemed unsure even for a moment. An upsetting incident.