You Gotta Be Careful!

[catfish]

I have had pretty good success eating out at most places, although some restaurants I have just learned to avoid. But this amusing incident made me realize that a lot of the people working in the kitchen aren't chefs, or even cooks for that matter. Just because they're cooking your food that doesn't mean that they know anything about food!

I went to an Italian restaurant and went over the menu. Almost everything was served with pasta, so I thought I'd ask the waiter whether I could get the rosemary chicken with potatoes instead of pasta. I explained that I could not eat any wheat and asked him if he would check with the cook staff to ensure that there would be no wheat sources in this. He came back with a smile and said it would be fine! So I asked for the chicken with potatoes rather than pasta and he replied, "You can have the pasta if you like."

To which I replied, "I can't have any wheat, remember?"

To which he replied, "There isn't any wheat in it. We checked"

Which of course made me sit up a bit and ask, "If there isn't any wheat in it, then what is it made of?"

He said he would go and get the ingredient list for me if I wanted to see for myself. I said that I would like that, and he went and got the list for me. Sure enough, as I expected, the first ingredient was "durum".

So I had to explain that this means wheat. I guess I assumed that anyone cooking pasta in an Italian restaurant would know that durum is wheat, but this showed me never, ever to assume anything of that sort!

[GFdoc]

I had to laugh when I read your post! I've had that happen to me so many times. I had someone say to me once that a food didn't have any wheat, just flour! Hello, are people that uninformed? It makes you laugh and cry at the same time....

It also makes me more scared to eat out (although I do it all the time)

Sara

[jaimek]

I also ran into that once. I told the waitress that I could not eat anything with gluten in it, and followed it up with an explanation of what gluten was. Her reply was, "We don't cook with any gluten. You don't have to worry about it." I asked her if they used pasta,hamburger buns, etc. She said "yes, of course." People are just so ignorant.

[Carol Farmholtz]

I have worked in resturants and I can't agree more that most of the staff, servers cooks and even managers are very clueless when it comes to any ingredients. I have heard a cook tell a server that fries were cooked in shortening when they are actually cooked in lard. When I mentioned that the fries were cooked in lard his response was "shortening - lard, same thing". I informed him that shortening was a plant based product and lard was an animal product and they are not the same thing!! The managers I had knew some about gluten as I had tried to educate everyone who worked there however one of the managers actually thought rice was a form of pasta!

[sunflower]

I never take anyone's knowledge about ingredients for granted anymore. I once told a waitress I cannot have anything containing wheat ingredients, such as wheat flour, or any dairy ingredients and asked for any dishes I could have. She then suggested a meat and potato dish, but I still preferred to double-check: is there any flour or cream based sauce? She said no. Is the meat covered in flour? She said no. So this is just plain fried meat without any batter or sauce? She said no, the meat has batter made of breadcrumbs. I used to think that anybody would know that you make breadcrumbs from bread, and bread is made from flour, but this girl did not seem to be able to make this connection. So I have learned to say that I am allergic to wheat and milk (from my experience, this works better in restaurants than saying "I can't have..." or "I have celiac disease"), and to ask for food that does not contain (and here goes a list of food ingredients which are obvious to me but might not be obvious to someone).

What serendipitystreet wrote is scary. I always thought they don't know about gluten, because many people don't, but other ingredients also... It's unbelievable. For someone like me, who has learned to read food labels almost since I knew how to read, it's hard to imagine that someone working in food industry can be so clueless.

[glen4cindy]

Yes, I too have ran into the statement, NO WHEAT, but, YES we use FLOUR. FLOUR isn't WHEAT is it?

I also find that people just don't realize how dangerous it is for us to consume wheat! I have the same problem with Equal sweetener. It will give me a massive migraine headache. I cannot tell you how many times we have gone to SONIC (not much anymore sice I discovered celiac disease) and ordered:

1 Diet Strawberry LimeAde &

1 Regular Strawberry LimeAde

and they mix them up. My wife is diabetic, and as I said above the equal gives me a massive headache. They act like mixing them up is not a big deal. I only wish that the poeple who will tell us something is safe without knowing what they are talking about could experience just what I do when I consume gluten unknowingly!

[tarnalberry]

I usually just go with the "I'm gluten intolerant, so I can't have anything with wheat like croutons, bread, or pasta."

[sashabetty]

this is an old thread but I wanted to add something. I had almost the opposite experience of the other posts.

I had a server who checked the ingredients in a Thai food dish and said it all seemed ok except there was "rice flour" in the noodles and that would be wheat. I tried to explain that I thought that "rice flour" was made of rice, but she could not comprehend that flour came from something besides wheat, and she was so concerned that it wouldn't be ok that I didn't think I could convince her to let me order it.