I hate eating out because most restaurants don’t understand how to deal with all of my food allergies.  I am anaphylactic to lobster and shellfish.  I am highly allergic to peanuts.  I am very allergic to wheat/glutlen, tree nuts, soy, corn/corn syrup, milk, caffeine and chocolate.  I may be celiac; my test results were inconclusive.  Lately though, between vacation and other happenings I have been eating in restaurants.  I thought I would share a few of my experiences.

We were visiting family in Guatemala this past summer.  Although the restaurants were not readily used to people with food allergies they were very accomodating.  While we were there we spent two days in the jungle and Mayan ruins of Tikal.  We stayed at a truly wonderful and rustic hotel called the Tikal Inn.  They went out of their way to ensure that everything I ate was safe.   They were friendly, accomodating, careful, and the food was delicious.  A great place to stay.

Closer to home we were visiting friends in Montauk, NY and we ate a local place, Murphy’s Pub.  It was HORRIBLE.  The waitress was nasty, rolling her eyes when I told her about my food allergies.  I asked her to check the ingredients of their turkey burger and she actually said no!  She spoke to the owner and came back and said that they would check it, but she was clearly annoyed.  He came over, told me what the label said but told me he could not promise me it was safe.  He too was clearly annoyed by my requests.  Everyone’s food was horrible, including mine.  I will never go back there, both because of their lack of customer focus, their horrible food and their terrible attitude and lack of safe food.  Stay away from here!

While on Montauk we went to a wonderful, tiny, all natural and spiritual store at Gin Beach – The Gin Beach Market.  It is run by a wonderful woman who is into everything natural and organic and really care about their products and their customers.  They have homemade special breads, local fruits and veggies and a small selection of organic products.  There was not a lot of stuff there for me to eat but we all found something to buy and felt very special in there.  There is a natural food store with more products in Montauk Center but we loved this store.  Just make sure you park in front of the store or in the restaurant parking lot to the left.  If you park in the beach parking lot they will ticket you.

We recently went to Chuck’s Steak House and we were highly disappointed.  The waiter was great, but the food was very expensive and not good.  Everything is breaded and there’s lots of seafood.  It was pretty busy in spite of their prices.  I won’t go back.

My experience is that even though restaurants say that they have a gluten-free menu you have to check everything 5 times.  My food almost always includes something that I cannot eat.  Still it can’t always be avoided and my search for a safe and accomodating restaurant continues.  I’d love to hear about your experiences too!