Thank you from someone learning about food allergies.

I want to say DISNEY is excellent. Get their manager – explain your limitations. On more than one occasion, they cooked for me an item that was off menu. I feel very confident eating there.

Beware of makeup – love Origins but they use wheat germ in many products.

We have a California Pizza Kitchen here where I live, and my dietician says they flow everything right in terms of protocol and cross contamination. Which is great! But from experience of working in a restaurant I know employees don’t always follow standards set in place. We also have a PF Changs but I’ve gotten sick there too. So I really want CPK to work because for me, it would be my only eat out resort. I’ve tried In N Out and they even made my food on a separate grill but something somewhere along the lines I was cross contaminated.

I’d like to have one safe restaurant and I would like it to be CPK, any recommendations on how I can politely tell them, hey you glutened me and please get your ducks in a row because I would really really like to continue coming here…
As always, thanks in advance GlutenDude 😉

This is the restaurant,

http://www.theacornrestaurant.ca/

and their current menu,

http://www.theacornrestaurant.ca/menu/Acorn_Early_Spring_Menu_Mar13_2015.pdf

Most of their dishes are incidentally/naturally GF, as opposed to ersatz versions of conventional non-GF meals, which meshes well with my eating philosophy (aside from the veg aspect, but I can handle that for one meal). Here’s a NYT review, which interestingly makes only passing reference to their GF fare:

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/table-talk-the-acorn-in-vancouver/

That said, I survived eating out each evening for two weeks while traveling the countryside in England without incident. That, however, was the result of at least two weeks of calling restaurants and speaking to chefs (not cooks in chain restaurants) and managers. If they or I didn’t feel comfortable with their ability to feed me safely, I didn’t go there. England is way ahead of the US on the whole understanding of Celiac and their willingness to accommodate. And I was told the chefs enjoy the challenge of coming up with something delicious to fit your needs. I guess what I’m saying in a long convoluted way is I’d much rather spend more for a really good safe meal and eat out rarely than eat out often at places with iffy food practices. I’m rambling….

I’ve also taken my own salad dressing and croutons with me to the two restaurants I trust. But I’ve still been served a salad with no croutons (because I brought my own), only to see crouton crumbs all over the top…indicating that someone put them on – then picked them off. The waitress argued with me that they certainly did not…until I pointed out the one they’d missed, hiding under a piece of lettuce.

I thought I’d lucked out with a Mexican restaurant that claims their only gluten-containing food is flour tortillas, so my daughter and I stopped in to pick up a few tacos…until they slapped a corn tortilla on the same warmer they used for the flour ones. Yeah. I cancelled the order. If they hadn’t started preparing it right in front of us though, I’d have never known…until the asthma-like symptoms hit.

So I pretty much avoid restaurants. In fact, I haven’t set foot inside one in more than three months. That’s one of the things I miss most now that I can’t have gluten. I used to love going out for supper…and lunch and breakfast. Now it just reminds me of everything I can’t have. Not unless I make it myself.