Sloane Miller: Dining Out and Traveling with a Food Allergy

Tristan and I were headed to the Big Apple to visit my sister and newborn nephew. (She’s just started her own parenting blog, please check it out!) It would be a trip of firsts for both of us – first mother-son trip, first trip by train, first time to NY (for Tristan), and first time dining out since Tristan’s first anaphylactic reaction. Needless to say I was most worried about the latter item.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed, I reached out to Sloane Miller, aka Allergic Girl, food allergy expert, and NYC resident.

sloane miller allergic girl

Through her company, Allergic Girl Resources, Sloane “provides advocacy, coaching and consulting to empower individuals with food allergies and their families to engage in the world safely, effectively, and joyously.” She also provides food allergy consulting and training for restaurants, government, and corporations. Sloane graciously offered me with a condensed consultation about managing, traveling with, and dining out with food allergies in preparation for our trip. (Please note that Tristan and I were not clients under Sloane Miller’s care and I’m offering this review of my own will, without any obligations.)

In preparation for our phone consultation, Sloane asked for the following information as they pertain to Tristan’s food allergies:

  • Diet Restrictions
  • History, Onset, Reactions
  • Testing Methods and Results
  • List of Doctors and Medication

Sloane used Tristan’s medical information to customize our session, where she shared her wisdom for traveling and dining out with Tristan’s multiple food allergies. And just what did I learn?  A LOT! She was so helpful and understanding, but also persistent (as a coach should be). A few of her recommendations really overwhelmed me and she sensed this, gently pushing the issue and reminding me why it was crucial.

Are you curious? Would you like to hear some of her advice? Well then, here are some of the highlights (in my own words).

  1. Make sure all medications are easily accessible and up to date.
  2. Have an Anaphylaxis Action Plan in place and approved by your or your child’s physician. AAAAI and FARE have samples you can download. While you may feel like you know exactly how you or your child reacts to an allergen, what if your child is out of your care and experiences a reaction, how will those temporary caregivers know how to immediately recognize a reaction and understand when emergency treatment is necessary?
  3. Locate the nearest hospitals and 24 hour pharmacies to your hotel. If possible, obtain the name and number of a local physician who can assist you if allergy medication is lost and needs replacement.
  4. Create a reference list of all known food allergies. Then add common foods where these allergens can be found. For example, for soy allergies you’d list tofu, tamari, soy sauce, vegetable oil, etc. Use this to email in advance to restaurants and hotel.
  5. Look for Allergy Friendly restaurant recommendation. Some great places to look are: AllergyEats, Allergic Living’s Dining Out Forum, and AllerDine. AllergyEats published a list of the most allergy friendly chains in America, which you may find useful and can find here.
  6. Research restaurants of interest online. Review the “about us” section of the restaurant’s website. Look for comments about how much they love their customers, hospitality first, special food requests, and food allergies.
  7. Contact restaurants & compliment the chef. Email or call the restaurant (during off hours) with your list of known food allergies and tell them you have emergency medication on hand. Ask if they can accommodate you.  It never hurts to compliment the chef and tell them you heard great things and really hope you can try their restaurant. If you’re not being “heard” move on, it’s not worth the effort and potential life threatening mistake.
  8. Make a reservation and dine early. If possible, make reservations using OpenTable, where you can create a profile and list all your allergies and make dining notes that will be sent to the restaurant when you make the reservation. Make a dining note like this one, “Looking forward to dining with you, severely allergic to…, carry emergency medication.” Try to eat with the early crowd as the chef and managing staff will have more time to talk with you and make you feel comfortable. Fewer customers means fewer errors in the kitchen and from the wait staff.
  9. Ask to bring your own food. If you’ll be dining out with several people and it proves too difficult to find a restaurant to accommodate your or your child’s allergies safely, ask the manager if you can bring your own food while the rest of your party eats from the menu. Sometimes they are ok with it, sometimes they aren’t. So ask when making a reservation, don’t wait until you show up for meal time.
  10. Listen to your intuition. If you feel at all uncomfortable at the restaurant, with your waiter, or the chef and feel the situation is risky, never eat. Send the food back if it’s questionable or ask to see product packaging to verify ingredients. If they won’t show you the bag because they’re too busy or for any other reasons, that’s a huge red flag – just walk out.
  11. Always have back-up food/snack to last you until an allergy friendly meal is available. This will come in handy especially if you walk out of a bad situation and need to spend time finding an alternative restaurant that can accommodate you. Even more so with small, hungry children in tow.
  12. Create a Chef Card.  This is basically a list (usually wallet size) of all food allergens that is given to the chef when you arrive at the restaurant. The Food Allergy Gourmet has a list of Chef Cards from various online resources. This was a LIFE SAVER for us, probably quite literally. I started out creating the food allergy list as described in #3 above, and it morphed into a Chef’s Card on steroids. The chefs (which I spoke with at every restaurant we dined at) loved my card as it was so thorough. Here is a pdf of the card I created and laminated.
  13. NEVER EVER go to a buffet. It’s just a cross contamination nightmare.
  14. REMINDER: There are no restaurants that are completely allergen free. Every single restaurant will have an allergen someone could react to because realistically people can be allergic to just about anything. So, it is your responsibility to make sure the restaurant is safe for you or your child.  Never assume.

On top of all this great advice, Sloane gave me the name of many restaurants she’s either dined at in NY or personally trained on food allergy safety. This really helped us. I’ll share the restaurants we chose to dine with in the next post about our visit to NY with multiple food allergies.

A HUGE thank you to Sloane Miller for her food allergy wisdom and allowing me to share it with you!

Now, let’s hear from you. What tips do you have for traveling and dining out with food allergies? What lessons have you learned?

5 Comments

  1. Amanda on March 26, 2013 at 10:24 am

    Her recommendations are awesome! I also avoid certain restaurants because of how frequently they use my allergens: I’ve never set food in a Thai restaurant because they use peanuts so often. Traveling to New Orleans, where there are a ton of (fried) seafood restaurants, was more concerning than traveling to Colorado for example, since I have a shellfish allergy, and a lot of stuff was fried in a common fryer.

    I definitely agree with knowing how close the nearest hospital and pharmacy is! I’ve had a few trips end up in ER visits. Going on the early or late side also makes me much more comfortable, like she said, because I can get more personal attention and the kitchen staff and waitstaff aren’t as busy either, so less mistakes!

    I also have left quite a few restaurants because I just had an “off” feeling about them, after talking to a waiter. Even if I called them in advance and they answered my questions fine, I feel if the waiter doesn’t “get” it or take my allergies seriously, that’s pretty alarming. One time, a waiter brought out my food (it was requested to come without pine nuts), and I confirmed that it had no pine nuts in it. The waiter said “Don’t worry, if you die, we’ll just throw you in the water!” (It was on a lake. He was joking, but still …. not very reassuring!)

    • Jennifer on March 26, 2013 at 11:12 am

      Hey Amanda – No way the waiter said that! How horribly insensitive! Wow. Thank you so much for your comments. We were really happy to speak with Sloane before our trip – definitely gave me the confidence I need to travel and ensure my little guy was able to eat safely away from home. Jennifer

      • Amanda on March 26, 2013 at 11:21 am

        I know it! Prior to that, it used to be my favorite restaurant too. It’s a very expensive place, so you’d think their servers wouldn’t make insensitive comments like that.

        That’s awesome that Sloane was so helpful to you and gave you so many tips and recommendations! It must be even more nerve-wracking when it’s not your own health, but your child’s!

    • Heather on February 26, 2014 at 6:20 pm

      We are traveling to Nola in a few weeks and are looking for recommendations for restaurants- we are peanut free/shellfish free/fish free- any recs?

      • Jennifer on February 28, 2014 at 6:14 pm

        Hi there- have fun! I’m not sure about safe dining there, but you can check with some good restaurant apps – yodish and allergyeats for recommendations.

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