simont | (no subject)

So last night the PuTTY team went out for an expensive meal at ‘Chez Gerard’, during which I accidentally departed from my strict gluten-free diet. The waiter sounded entirely clued-up on the subject and confidently pointed out the (large) subset of the menu which was safe for me to eat; but just as I'd finished my starter he dashed up looking very apologetic and said it had had breadcrumbs on top.

In fact I had noticed this myself when the starter arrived, and had almost called someone over to double-check before starting to eat, but didn't quite do so because the waiter had seemed so knowledgeable that I decided to trust him, and therefore assumed that the apparent breadcrumbs were something breadcrumb-like but gluten-free. As Ben pointed out, though, it's perfectly possible to be both knowledgeable and wrong :-/ Next time I'll be less trusting.

It's very annoying that I don't quite know whether to feel cross with the waiter or with myself. If the breadcrumbs had been non-obvious then it would clearly have been nobody's fault but the waiter's; but they were obviously there and I nearly double-checked but didn't, which makes me feel as if I knew perfectly well I was making a mistake but made it anyway.

Oh well. I'm sure I'll survive; I didn't have any perceptible symptoms even before going on the diet, so it wasn't as if I was in any immediate danger of exploding violently. I do slightly worry, though, that experiences like this might make me more reluctant to risk eating out at all, which would be a bad thing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It normally takes a couple of months for the reactions to be very noticable, but it does depend on how bad your reactions to eating wheat was when it was in your diet.

The problem of serving staff forgetting that things are covered in breadcrumbs or similar is something I've come across in the past as well; to the point that if I order up a goats cheese salad that I'll ensure that the person I'm ordering from really does understand that the round of cheese shouldn't have breadcrumbs on it. The problem is often that the cheese comes ready prepared with the breadcrumbs already on it :(