Bit of a Rant On Eating Out

To quote Einstein - Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

 

Having a food allergy or intolerance can seem daunting, because you can never let down your guard. We are very cautious on where we eat out and pick places that have better handling and knowledge of things. But that doesn’t always mean that it works that nicely.

 

We have a great local place that we love, but we are now on strike 3 of getting a meal that we trust, when we get takeout. Dining in is fine, but any to go meal there is an issue.  I got asked, “why do you go back” – We’ll it’s hard to find good options of different foods, so where do you compromise?

 

Doing take out during Covid, and poor service from restaurants has made us extra meticulous at checking our order before we leave. Every Single Time! Because nothing irks me even more than getting home and not having food that I can eat!

 

Our last visit, to a place we love, we checked the food, and noticed my husband’s plate wasn’t what he wanted, but he said it was fine, it was something he liked. My meal looked fine; our shared plate looked fine. When we got to our destination, and I took a bite of our shared plate I could tell right away, it wasn’t what we ordered. My heart sank, and panic set in. How could we be duped for the 3^rd time. After spitting out my food and trying to not cry, my husband walked up and asked what was wrong. I showed him and he started to fume. Some back and forth we decided to hold off either of us eating anymore and stop at the restaurant on the way home to show them the issue and ask for a refund.  

 

Upon walking in and telling them, they assured me the meal was gluten free, but they could see I was still not happy. They did make a new plate for us and had their co-owner who is also Celiac come out and talk to us. She kept saying it wasn’t their fault, their vendor who makes the gluten free items, makes only gluten free items one day of the week. So while the filling in the product was wrong, it was still gluten free. I kept emphasizing to her how this is still an issue, cause it causes concern if we got the wrong order, (Has happen there before, or it's the Non-GF version). On a previous trip we were confused because we ordered different flavors of items, but my husband ended up being given the same flavors as me, but Not Gluten free. Again, we started to freakout how to tell the difference and make sure I got the right food.

 

We chatted on how hard it is to get good help that is able to make sure they’re doing a consistently good job. How awful is that, that people handling food, just don’t care! I'd be less annoyed if they didn't have a sign hanging by the register how all meals are checked by a food safety manager trained in allergies. Yet I'm annoyed, trust broken, and telling myself I'm OK cause my instincts were right stop eating when something was wrong, but still annoyed we had such a hassle and extra drama to deal with. We've called about issues in the past, and been refunded, as they were closing and couldn't get replacement meal in time. Knowing that they have had issues in the past, you'd think as someone with Celiac owning the place, they would work to be better, over all. But It may be too much to ask for these days.

 

Rant over for now. But I'm sure there will be a follow rant on the same topic soon, sadly.