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Kristine wrote:
> Several posts also understanding my main concern was the lack of 
> awareness by the kitchen and that all liability fell on the 
> communication between the server and the kitchen staff and ultimately 
> the customer telling the server how the food must be prepared.( FWIW I 
> expect to do this in a restaurant that does not have a gf menu but I do 
> not expect to do this in a restaurant that has specific gf menus.

I think it's important to make the point here that your expectations, 
then, do not match the situation you're in -- in effect, you're 
punishing the restaurants that go out of their way to offer instruction 
on how to get a GF meal at their establishments. It's the chain's 
expectation that in offering a GF menu, the customer will indeed take on 
the responsibility of communicating to the server and the kitchen staff 
how they need their food prepared, just as they would at ANY other 
restaurant -- just with the added and highly valuable advantage of 
having all possible sources of gluten prelabeled for them.

Restaurants are notoriously high for turnover in staff, and frankly we 
are not the only allergy/food issue out there. It would literally be 
nearly impossible to have any restaurant's staff 100% trained at all 
times. Therefore, the responsibility of explaining how the food must be 
prepared must always lie with the customer.

And truly, why would we want it any differently? Otherwise, you are 
literally putting your health into someone else's hands. If you had a 
peanut allergy that could kill you on the spot, for example, I doubt you 
would trust any waitress to just give you something peanut-free because 
the restaurant knows about peanut allergies. It probably takes us an 
extra two minutes total, at most, to order GF, in great detail, for all 
five of us at Outback . We can do that because we've been told by the 
chain -EXACTLY- how to order the meal. We don't have to play 20 
questions over each item that's going on the plate. That is indeed a 
relief and a special attribute of both Outback and Carraba's.

If we're going to take exception to having to take that two minute's 
time to properly order our food, and then publicly slam the chain, we're 
going to find that fewer and fewer places are going to be willing to 
offer GF meuns, and those that do already may rescind them.

All that said, I'm sure there are going to be stray bad experiences 
anywhere, and that some managers are better than others, etc. But I 
think the best course of action is to take that complaint personally and 
directly to the corporate office -- not publicly slam the chain and 
cause them to rethink their GF menu because of all the badmouthing they 
get. If we're not writing in to report every good experience we've had, 
let's be careful in reporting the bad ones, too.

Cheers,
Deb

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