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Dear List,

I have successfully eaten in lots of restaurants since diagnosis 
(biopsy, blood) eleven years ago. Planning ahead: of course. Polite: 
of course. Beyond that, I have learned that it is up to me to manage 
the fears, stress, and anxieties of the personnel from wait people to 
chef.

Sometimes, if the place is very busy and the wait person seems 
stressed, immune to my charms and  unwilling to be helpful, I just 
suck it up and eat the simplest thing -- or nothing. That happens, 
but very rarely, and only in big, mass-market kinds of places. I 
don't really expect the staff at those kinds of places to be 
well-versed in how things are prepared in their kitchens, so I am 
pleasantly surprised if I have the good fortune to run into someone 
who a) knows and b) is patient and helpful.

More often, fear management comes down to a few handy sentences. One 
has already been suggested: "Don't worry; I'm not going to choke and 
fall over dead; no anaphylactic shock." Another, which I find useful, 
is: "It's easier than it sounds, particularly in a place like yours 
that controls most of its ingredients." That sentence has the value 
of being both reassuring and flattering. Sometimes, if it's a place 
with a menu that reflects ambition in the kitchen but the wait person 
is balky or has trouble with English, I just walk to the kitchen and 
find the chef, sometimes over the wait person's objections. Smiling a 
lot and pretending not to hear the protest helps; if it looks like 
I'm causing real consternation, of course I back down.

I am careful to control the process. I say at the outset,  "...no 
gluten which, practically speaking, means no flour, no bread, no 
croutons plus some other things too tedious to list."

I do not want a menu marked with "okay" items. If I get one, I thank 
them profusely but pretty much ignore it. Most of the time, something 
I'd like and am pretty sure is gluten-free has not been marked. 
Violating what they think is a list set in stone poses a problem, so 
I say something like this, "Hmmm! I am so surprised this is not 
marked as gluten-free. Do you know why? I can't imagine what the 
problem would be, and I'm curious....:

As you all know, too many people, including well-trained chefs, don't 
really know what we mean by "gluten-free." Just the other day, in a 
high-end NYC restaurant, a young man assured me he'd worked for years 
in the kitchen and knew everything about how the food was made. He 
did....but he neglected to mention soy sauce as being in a given 
item. To an Asian cook like him, soy sauce is no more notable an 
ingredient than salt. This brings me to another point, which is that 
it is exceedingly helpful to know something about cooking. It is my 
good luck that I was fairly knowledgeable on that score at the time 
of diagnosis. Makes it a lot easier to parse menus, to identify 
things that are probably okay, and to ask questions (as I did the 
other day) like, "Are you sure there's no soy sauce in that?"

I control the ordering further by telling the wait people that "the 
easiest way to do this is for me to pick out a few things that are 
probably okay, and then find out all the ingredients."

I try to be very reassuring: "I am virtually certain that (item x) is 
okay....." Sometimes they try to insist that I give them a list of 
problem ingredients, which I will not do. Going down that road gets 
too scary for them. I say something like, "the list of problem things 
is too long for anyone to remember....stuff you'd never think of and 
would not know unless you had to...you don't want to know.....I 
really appreciate your wanting to help, but experience has taught me 
that this really is the easiest way...I would be surprised if x item 
isn't okay but of course I need to know for sure." Etc.

If the item is quite simple (i.e. "arugula salad with hazlenut oil"), 
I just ask, "Does this have any ingredient not listed? Salt? Garlic?" 
That conveys the importance of my knowing EVERY ingredient.

Of course, I ask about cooking techniques, about stock and so forth.

I keep a short list of safe brands of common items in my head. What I 
say is: "My rule of thumb is that anything that comes in a bottle, 
can or packet is suspect. Of course many brands are okay, but many 
are not." If a dish includes, say, canned tomatoes, I ask if they 
could please find out the brand?

Having initially narrowed the menu choices down to just a few 
naturally makes things easier. It also helps to stagger the questions 
rather than ask them all at once. The goal is to convince the staff 
that this really is no trouble at all, an easy thing they can easily 
do, and if they could just do me this little favor and find out this 
one more little thing....

You get the drift.

I love food, I love eating out, and I almost never have a problem, 
whether in NYC or elsewhere in the country. I also carry raisins and 
almonds with me, just in case....my version of what I am sure most of 
the people on this list do anyway.

Bon appetit!

Mary B.
NYC




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