Do you know what gluten free precautions to look for when you dine out in a restaurant? I thought I did until I decided to call around and see how much the restaurants knew. Some were great; others were downright scary!
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Dining Safely Gluten Free to Avoid Cross-Contamination
I have been both stunned and amazed at what restaurants say they know about gluten cross-contamination.
Please don’t get me wrong. Many restaurants understand how important it is to prevent cross-contamination in the kitchen. I love talking to those restaurants. They make me feel like we are speaking the same language. Other ones scare me.
If you are new to gluten free, I have a great introduction to gluten free living article to help get you started. There are lots of gluten free resources on my blog as well.
Drum roll, please……I will start with the #10 most scary thing and work my way to the worst, #1.
10. “How long are you going to be on this gluten free diet?”
Wow, where do I start? How about for the rest of my life?? As much as I am thankful for the gluten free diet “fad” for helping get companies to put out more gluten free products, it set back those who need to eat gluten free for medical reasons.
Restaurants don’t know how to differentiate between gluten free for a diet vs. gluten free for medical reasons. Have you been asked how allergic are you? Or even better, #9.
9. “Are you allergic or just trying to lose weight?”
I kid you not. Someone asked me that over the phone. When I replied, “Yes, I really am allergic,” the staff told me I should tell my wait person when I come in that I have a real allergy so they can take precautions.
Really? So, if I interpret that correctly, this restaurant only takes safe gluten-handling practices seriously when you tell them you have a real gluten allergy. What if a gluten free diner in this restaurant doesn’t know what to specify?
8. “Our kitchen is too small to use separate pans and utensils.”
This is a common problem for restaurants in the Bay Area. I am not sure I fully understand why a restaurant would make an effort to accommodate gluten free diners if they can’t do it safely. I am trying to visualize a cook line. It would surprise me if a cook didn’t switch pans and utensils as they cooked each order.
No restaurant would use a pan to make chicken marsala, then use the same pan to make a scampi order, so I don’t understand why it is hard to switch to sterilized pans and utensils for gluten free orders. You have to switch to clean pans after each order anyway.
7. “Flour is in the air, so nothing on our gluten free menu is really gluten free.”
I understand this completely. Flour can stay in the air for up to 24 hours. Unless you make the gluten free items in a separate area, it is impossible to keep things perfect. I also appreciate the restaurant’s honesty in telling me this.
My main question is, why have a separate gluten-free menu? Wouldn’t it be better to state that you can modify menu items and have the server explain potential cross-contamination to diners? This dialog could be a valuable tool to help the diner understand the risks and make an educated choice.
6. Restaurant: “Our restaurant makes gluten free pizzas in a separate area in our kitchen, away from our regular pizzas. We have separate pans, cutters, and paddles for gluten free pizzas.”
Me: “Wow, it sounds like you know what you are doing to keep gluten free customers safe. Do your chefs change their gloves before they start to make a gluten free pizza?”
Restaurant: “Oh, I never thought of that. I should let my District Manager know.”
Well, kudos to the manager who saw value in my question. I hope this information about changing gloves makes it to all of the pizza restaurants in this chain.
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Check out all of my gluten free safe dining tips, so you know what to look for when dining out.
5. “I had a friend eat it, and they seemed okay.”
Seemed okay? What does okay look like? Many reactions happen internally hours or even days after ingesting gluten.
4. Restaurant: “We prep and cook our gluten free pizzas on a separate sterilized mesh.”
Me: “So you put the gluten free pizza dough on a sterilized mesh, and then you take that gluten free pizza on the mesh and put it down on the same counter where you put the meshes that had wheat pizzas on? Can’t wheat flour go up through the holes in the mesh?”
Restaurant: “That is why we don’t guarantee our gluten free pizzas are gluten free.”
Am I the only one who thinks this is strange? Why have gluten free pizza if you are going to contaminate it? It seems like a wasted effort on the restaurant’s part. Maybe they should put a sign on their menu next to their gluten free pizza listing and refer to #9 above. It could say only eat our gluten free pizza if you are on the gluten free diet as a fad diet.
3. “You should be safe. It is made out of wheat, not gluten.”
I will never eat at this place. They have not taken the time to educate their staff.
And now the top two scary things restaurants have said to me:
2. Restaurant: “We pre-cook gluten free pasta in freshwater. When someone orders a gluten free pasta dish, we warm the pasta back up in the boiling water on the stove.”
Me: “Is this boiling water on the stove fresh or designated only for gluten free pasta?”
Restaurant: “No, it is the same water we use for all pasta.”
Me: “You do realize you contaminate the gluten free pasta when you warm it up in the same water you warm up wheat pasta, right?”
Restaurant: “Wow, come to think of it, you are right.”
Me: “You need to change that policy. You could make someone really sick.”
I was speechless after this conversation. At least this restaurant manager thanked me. I hope this is corrected ASAP.
1. “As careful as we are, if my kids had a problem with gluten, I wouldn’t let them eat out knowing what restaurants do.”
Wow! As a parent of gluten-intolerant kids, this one scared me the most. What am I supposed to think? His comment left a LOT out there. What do restaurants do? Which restaurants was he thinking about when he said that? I need to find out so I can avoid those places.
So there you have my list of The Top Ten Scary Things Restaurants Have Said To Me. As you can see, gluten-free is misunderstood in the restaurant world.
This subject is near and dear to my heart. It is why I started this blog in the first place. Please visit my restaurant database and click on restaurants in your area. You can see what their safe gluten-handling policies are.
Use this blog as a guideline to ask the right questions when you go out to eat. And lastly, please help me get the word out. Restaurants don’t understand that misleading statements can make a gluten-intolerant person sick.
I would love to hear what restaurants have said to you! I also have 100s of easy gluten free recipes to check out!
This post was updated from an old November 2013 post with a lot more information.
I truly hope you enjoy this recipe. I have been testing and creating gluten-free recipes for over 15 years. Creating gluten-free recipes that do not taste gluten-free is my goal for every recipe. Sometimes I only have to test a new recipe a couple of times, and others it takes multiple times. I do this so you get reliable, delicious results every time!
Restaurants have made some progress since you wrote this, but hospital dietary departments are terrifying.
I had one lady deliver my grilled chicken on a bun. When I protested, she said, “Take it off the bun.”
If you have additional food allergies, they really think you’re crazy.
I was in the hospital in January of 2016 and was starving to death!
Because of the so-called gluten free Cheerios, I now have advanced autoimmune Cirrhosis of the liver. The doctors are astonished! The University of Tennessee liver transplant team is advising me to get on the liver transplant ist, but knowing I would be unable to always protect myself after such extensive surgery, I think my chances are better working to encourage my liver to regenerate as much as possible!
Oh wow, I didn’t even think of hospitals Robyn, that is scary. Cheerios is doing a horrible job keeping this product safe. We won’t eat them after reading about how they are inconsistent. I am so sorry to hear about your liver and the trouble. Autoimmune disease is such a scary thing. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help.
I agree hospitals are the worse. Every time my daughter has been in the hospital I have had to make her food and bring it which required someone to stay with her while I did it because she also has Autism on top of autoimmune, celiac and allergy to dairy. If I could show you pictures of what they have brought her with the paper sitting on the tray that had the allergies written in red you would be shocked. The place people are suppose to be safe and get well in is a joke.
“What on this plate contains gluten?”
This was said by the manager while holding a hamburger on a bun! Then she wanted to make me another meal. NO THANK YOU,
Oh wow Cheryl. I am so glad you didn’t eat there! These things can be so scary. One mistake by the restaurant and we get so sick. Take care and thank you for writing in 🙂
When I called Pizza Hut to find out if they had gluten-free pizzas, the worker on the phone said, “What’s gluten? I worked in a restaurant for 20 years, so I wouldn’t put much faith in not getting cross-contamination. I rarely eat out.
That is scary…I wouldn’t feel safe at a Pizza Hut either!
My daughter and I are gf and dairy free. We had been eating at PF Changs from their gf menu for a few years, but as my daughter and I grew more and more sensitive to foods we noticed that we weren’t feeling well after eating there. Finally after the last time we ate their my daughter was very sick and I called them and grilled them about their menu. Turns out they marinate all of their meats in milk. We no longer eat there.
I am so sorry to hear that Rachel…but it is coincidental. I just got glutened big time at their Sacramento, CA location. I was sick for two days. I will never eat there again either.
At a highly health-conscious Chinese restaurant, I kept getting sick even though I ordered only GF items. I learned the afternoon crew was prepping every dish with soy sauce before the restaurant opened for dinner.They meant well.
I am so sorry to hear to hear this experience. I haven’t been to a Chinese restaurant (except for E&O Kitchen in SF) in years.
Knowing how cross contamination can happen is half the battle 🙂
I visited a bagel shop and asked if they had any wheat-free bagels. The lady told me that all their bagels were wheat-free because they were made out of flour not wheat.
OMG that is awful!
At a local chain restaurant, I ordered a salad – with no croutons. It came with croutons. When I asked for a manager, he came over. I explained what happened and he took the salad, saying he would take care of it right away. He proceeded to pick the croutons off, blow the crumbs off the lettuce and set the salad back down in front of me, saying. “There. No croutons.”
I kid you not. I was ASTOUNDED.
Wow Charlie, that is just gross that he blew the crumbs off your lettuce. That would be #1 on my list if I write another article about this 🙂
Welcome to life as a vegetarian….
That can be tricky as well. If you are ever in San Francisco, you should try Millenium. It is an incredible vegan restaurant. I swear the chef is the vegetable whisperer!
With the number of people with gluten and wheat intolerences, I can’t believe how very ignorant people really are in the food industry. I have a severe wheat intolerance where if i even get a little wheat in a sauce such as from non-gluten free vinegar or soy etc I am sick for a couple of weeks. So when I order from a supposed gluten free menu I expect it to be just that GLUTEN FREE. I recently ate out with a friend for my birthday at a top restaurant and the orders we accidently switched…I got the one with the gluten. They didn’t discover it until we were almost finished with the meal…One must be so careful…The manager gave us the meal for free and asked me if there was something I could take for it….
Wow Betty, that is awful. I hope you were okay. That is what scares me. Even more if it were one of my kids getting the wrong plate. Thank you for telling us your story.
These are scary stories on asking questions and not eating out if they have gluten free items. They are only a few restaurants that serve gluten free, vegan choices. So you have to ask a lot of questions how they prepare a recipe, or have any gluten-a protein that contains in wheat products, the end products and yeast. I was trained all about cross contamination, food allergies and how an ingredient may get customers sick. This is really a serious matter because I work at an organic grocery store that also has a big prepared foods section. We have a lot of customers who have food sensitivites and allergies, so we are aware about it, and we can ask questions to make sure that it is safe to eat. If this arises, I would recommend other choices available. We are also make sure to clean workspace thoroughly and we wash hands and change gloves on every process when handling gluten-free items, and other food sensitivities.
These are great tips. Thank you so much for your note, and for the care you take to make sure your customers are taken care of :-).
I was out to lunch, in the Cleveland area,and we stopped at a place called the Hairy Buffalo. I asked our waitress if they any gluten free options and she said the salads were safe and any of the sandwiches, minus the bread.
Ok, I said and placed my order.
She asked if I’d like fries because they were gluten free and I asked if they fried them in the same oil as everything else. She went to the kitchen to ask. (Of course, I already knew the answer but it was worth sending her to the kitchen to ask).
She came back and said “yes, the fries are cooked in the same oil as everything else but that
they still didn’t contain any gluten”.
I told her that if they were fried in the same oil as everything else, they were contaminated with
gluten through the oil. She replied, “oh, ok”. Not sure the concept really registered but I agree
with one of the earlier posts here that said that the food industry really needs to educate their
entire staff about gluten (and really all other allergies).
On the same note, I work for Disney, in Florida, during the winter and let me tell you… those folks
are totally on top of the allergies. They have a manager, coordinator or chef directly consult with
the person with the allergies (or the parent), write down what the allergies are, go over the list
of ingredients with them, then THAT person (manager, chef, etc) goes back to the kitchen and
prepares that meal, separate from all the other food, and instructs the guest NOT to accept a
food tray from anyone else because that manger/chef will bring the meal to them directly. Even
the cashiers at the quick service restaurants are not permitted to take an allergy order, to ensure
there are no mistakes made. The rest of the country’s restaurants could learn a lot from those
folks at Disney.
There is also a pizza shop in the area (Uno’s) who were not totally aware that Feta cheese is
not necessary safe for those who are Lactose intolerant. I asked one day if the Feta was cow
or goat milk. They brought the package out to me to read the ingredients. I told them that if the
ingredients didn’t specifically say “Goat” or “Sheep” milk cheese, then it was assumed to be
cow and would prompt a reaction to anyone lactose intolerant. Some people may not be able
to even consumer the goat/sheep .milk products but many, many can and it is a life saver for
those who love cheese. I noticed the following year, upon returning to the area, that that pizza
place started offering “goat cheese” on the menu. I was impressed at their rapid willingness to
get corporate to make that change in their menu to help accommodate that issue. That same
year they also started offering Gluten Free pizza crust. HURRAY!!!
Wow Snowhawk, thank you so much for your note. Sounds like the staff at Hairy Buffalo could use a little more training. Thank you for letting us know about Disney. That is a place we definitely need to check out sometime soon.