I have had quite a few discussions in the last few weeks with various people about gluten free products in mainstream establishments and the apparent acceptance of requiring a gluten free meal when I go out to eat. Initially I’m in total agreement. I was diagnosed as a coeliac nearly twenty years ago and have seen massive changes in the quality and availability of gluten free food. However, has this meant that eating out and buying food on the run has become easier? Sadly, the definitive answer is ‘not really’.
As I write this, I’m sitting in a car park waiting for my son to finish a music workshop having raced from London to Cheltenham. I’m quite a few miles from home and have been for two days due to a friend’s party, which is taking place back in London. So, the situation is quite unique, but very telling in terms of the acceptance of my diet.
Firstly, I had to check with the hotel in London where we stayed that the breakfast I had paid for included a gluten free option. I had a bizarre conversation with a member of staff at the hotel, where she was able to tell me what items were wheat free on the menu, but not gluten free. I did get a tad pious and informed her that since December 2014, she was legally obliged to know which of the 14 allergens were in the food they were serving and that gluten was one of them! So with a proverbial flea in her ear, she finally found out the information and then said that special gluten free bread would be purchased for me.
Herein lies the first of the difficulties. I applaud totally the opening up of the gluten free market – in fact for the last ten years I have made my income from exactly that, however, there is such a raft of mixed information on gluten free. I can’t tolerate oats or wheat starch in any form at all. The other factor is that some supermarket bread upsets my tummy – not sure why, but they don’t agree with me. So what do I do? Do I present all these various dietary caveats every time I want to stay somewhere or eat out? I know that they would have either sent someone to the supermarket to buy a loaf; or ordered a long life loaf from their preferred foodservice supplier. Would I have the courage to say “Oh and by the way, please don’t pick up blah blahs bread and please make sure you don’t buy something with oats in and also can you please make sure it’s wheat free.” Now I’m beginning to sound like the client from Hell. I don’t actually know the answer to that rhetorical question, but being the “Please don’t fuss” sort of person, I don’t say anything and hope for the best!
I don’t think that I’m particularly unique in ‘no oats or wheat’ either, so when did the use of wheat and oats in gluten free food become so widespread that it’s made things very complicated for people like me. It’s the same when one eats out. Do you say I’m gluten free, but can you make sure blah blah blah. It just sort of further compounds the impression that we are faddy eaters…..and this is really where this blog is going in a roundabout sort of way
The second issue I am facing is that today I had no way of preparing my lunch, so what do I eat on the go….as it happens Cheltenham has four major supermarkets that I found after embarking on a mission to find a Costa where I can sit and drink my daily rocket fuel. I’ve been into each one to check out what’s on offer. I ignored all the ‘fresh’ bread - (the fresh bit is the basis for a whole dissertation – let alone a blog!). I am so spoilt making bread of my own, that I cannot physically bring myself to eat the stuff in supermarkets. They’re not so bad toasted, but I can’t get past the ‘pappiness’ (a new made up adjective!) and the lack of bite and chew in the bread. So I opted for crackers in Asda with cheese, then found a Waitrose, so bought falafels and tzatziki as well. Do you think ‘normal’ people struggle like this or am I just way too fussy?
Anyway, the point of all of this is that I’m so glad that I can pick up something – it may not be completely to my taste, but it’s a lot easier than it was five years ago, let alone twenty. However, this in itself leads to so many more problems. The first is that in order to make money the offering has to be a ‘catch all’ – hence the wheat/oat issue. The second is that like all products in supermarkets the free from range has to earn its keep and due to the low stock turnover, the products have to last at least seven to ten days. Herein lies my confusion with the term ‘fresh’ bread. If my bread was left out in ambient conditions for more than four days, it wouldn’t be very edible. Providing it was cool enough, it may not be mouldy, but it certainly would need toasting to eat it. So what fresh product lasts that long?
The other problem I have faced is eating out. I often read on various message boards how fantastic Nandos is for gluten free. Over fifteen years ago I was distinctly put off the chain by being served coffee with a very dirty spoon and that has led to my reluctance to try the food. However, we decided to bite the bullet and try it on Saturday evening. I checked with the server at the counter in a thick book what could be gluten free – as much as I appreciate the thoroughness of this method, I do find it very frustrating to have to go through pages and pages of allergens – why the menu options can’t be collated like other restaurants I do not know.
Anyway, it turns out that all the chicken, the chips and the rice are all gluten free. Doing a whoop whoop, I went ahead and ordered two platters of chicken – one spicy for me and my husband and one plain in case it was too spicy for the kids. As there was an approximate wait of 45 minutes, I also ordered a starter of garlic bread for the kids to keep them going. The garlic bread arrived and was consumed greedily whilst I gulped my wine.
When the platter came (to be fair in about thirty minutes, which was fine) it came with two pieces of garlic bread plonked on top of the spicy chicken platter, thus contaminating the chicken and fries. I called the waiter over and explained that a) we’d already had our garlic bread, and b) I had informed the server that I was a coeliac and that I required the meal to be gluten free and it now obviously wasn’t. The waiter called over the manager and he offered to re-cook my meal for me. Apparently what had happened was that the server had duly taken note of my gluten free meal, but he just failed to inform the kitchen.
So here’s my problem with the whole opening up of the gluten free market…..there’s still too much room for error. What I don’t understand about the whole thing is that if it were a vegetarian meal, then the whole process would be vegetarian from start to finish. So, for example, if I ordered some vegetable risotto (labelled as such), I would not expect to find chunks of ham in it, or a slab of steak on top, because the person who took my order had failed to tell the kitchen that I was a vegetarian. Being gluten free is the same principle…..if you say an item on the menu is gluten free, then it should always be so – no digression at all. It is gluten free from taking the order to serving it. That would save so much hassle, discussions and fundamentally adds to an establishment’s customer service credentials.
Sadly, I can’t imagine going back. Eating out for me is supposed to be enjoyable and yet it almost always seems to be a hassle? The big question is why is it always so hard? If you decide to serve a dish and you purport it to be something, then surely the easiest way to ensure it is, is to have procedures in place that don’t vary and ALL your staff know what those procedures are. Not wishing to harp back to the vegetarian example, but no-one (I hope!!!) would dream of serving a veggie meal with a side order of meat.....
