Eating out With Food Allergies - Macaroni Grill

While hoping around on our whirlwind of a vacation, we also made another eating out find. A friend of ours in Southern California works for the Macaroni Grill, and convinced us to come by. She said they have allergy menus for the top 8 allergens, and the only obvious peanut products she has seen are on a cake shipped into the place from an outside source with peanuts already on them.

I looked into this new and exciting eating out option, and discovered that the Macaroni Grill belonged to a chain of restaurants owned by a company called Brinker International.

Brinker International Restaurant home page
http://www.brinker.com/

This company appears to be quite allergy aware, and all the restaurants except for Maggiano's have top 8 allergy menus similiar to the ones at Red Robin.

Macaroni Grill Allergy menus

http://www.brinker.com/gr/allergens/mac%20Allergen.PDF

Chili's Allergy Menu

http://www.brinker.com/gr/allergens/Chilis%20Allergen.PDF

In The Boarder

http://www.brinker.com/gr/allergens/otb%20allergen.pdf

With all this allergy awareness ozing around me, I decided we should check out the Macaroni Grill. Thankfully here, there was Macaroni and Cheese that was egg and nut free, so Conor actually ate something besides ice cream and french fries. He was able to have raspberry sherbet for desert that came with his kids meal, and was very happy to be able to eat exactly what everyone else was. Everyone enjoyed their meal, and there was no cartoon mascot to be seen.

Our experience although wonderful was greatly helped by our family friend who helped us out during the entire meal. When we showed up she had the allergy menus ready, and had already read through them to see what was safe. She oversaw our waiter and checked in the kitchen on our food preparation to make sure Conor's food was prepared separately. She even took all the little ones to check out the kitchen and see how things are made.

If you do not have an insider though, I do not know how allergy aware they would be if you walked in unknown. It is certainly worth a phone call, to see if it is in your comfort zone. Also, any company that takes the time to make up and maintain allergy menus deserves a big YAHOO!! and is certianly worth a look into.

I have also not tested out any of the other restaurants owned by this company with allergy menus. I had heard a rumor that Chili's used peanut butter in the chili, and I have no clue whether or not this is true. I would certainly need to check it out before we went in person.

If anyone knows about any of the other restaurants please let me know, because I HATE calling!

Eating out with Food Allergies - Red Robin

Whew!!! We finally made it back from our vacation, and boy am I tired. I enjoyed the family vacation, but now I need a vacation from the family. :) We tried camping for one night in a cabin with just beds in it. It was fun, but I have never been so happy to have brought the great little porta potty with us for use in the middle of the night.

http://www.kalencom.com/main/page.asp?id=8&s_cate_id=02&tid=&bt=&cs=

It is called the on the go potty, and although they sell liners, you can use regular old plastic bags. For anyone with little ones potty training, or newly trained, I highly recommend getting one. I used to be driving along when I was potty training the twins and one of them would decide they needed to go just when we got far enough away from everything that there was no going back. Then there was no way I was dragging three little children into some random store to try and find a potty, so the on the go potty became my best friend. We don't use it very often these days, but if you are going camping and happen to be no where near the bathroom, it can be extremely, extremely, extremely helpful. I could make some sort of potty joke here, but I am censoring myself.

The real reason I came here tonight was to post about some of our eating out experiences while on the road. A few other bloggers had mentioned that Red Robin has allergy menu's, and they had good experiences there.

Check out the Food Allergy Buzz's great review here
http://www.foodallergybuzz.com/2008/07/food-allergy-friendly-restaurant-tip.html

And the Peanut Allergy Kid's comments here

http://www.peanutallergykid.com/2008/08/review-of-peanut-allergy-friendly.html

Armed with this exciting information, we first headed out to the local Red Robin to check it out. When the waitress came over I asked for the Allergy menus, and she quickly went to get the manager, who delivered them personally to our table. Conor is allergic to peanuts and eggs, and these came printed out as two different menus. This was great, but it took me quite a while to cross reference between the two of them to discover what items were ok for both the peanut and egg allergic. Thankfully they supply crayons to the table to color with, so I was able to color code the menu's to determine what items were on both menus.

Michael and Natalie both decided they wanted chocolate shakes, so Mick ordered them before I was able to cross reference the allergy menus only to discover that it was not safe for Conor. This mad Conor very, very, very upset (the taunting from his brother did not help), and we finally compromised on getting him some vanilla ice cream in a cup that looked just like his brother and sisters. Of the other options available to him, he insisted he would only eat the french fries with his cup of plain vanilla ice cream. Yes, not a very nutritious meal, but at least it was safe. The manager delivered the allergy menus to us, asked us if we had any questions, and visited the table later in the meal to check on us. The rest of us enjoyed our food as much as one can at a chain restaurant with a giant red bird as a mascot, and were generally very pleased with the experience.

The Red Robin Mascot

After the good experience up in Northern California, we decided to try another Red Robin down in Southern California where we were visiting the grandparents. When we sat down, I nicely asked our waitress for the allergy menu's for peanuts and eggs. She looked at me like I was completely insane and told me there were no such thing as allergy menus, but if it was really important she could put a note on our order. I still politely informed her that there were allergy menus and suggested she either speak to her manager, or allow me to speak to him for her. She stormed off like a teenager, only to return a few minutes later with her tail between her legs to let me know that she was printing off the allergy menus and they would be at our table in a few minutes. A few minutes turned into alot of minutes, but they finally arrived. Conor wanted his Red Robin usual of ice cream in a cup like a shake, and french fries, and enjoyed every second of his meal. He had no reactions, and the rest of the meal went smoothly even though there were no overly cheerful manager visits to our table.


So all in all, I would say that our visits to Red Robin were a success. I only was looked at once like I was crazy, the allergy menus are very useful, and there were no reactions. The only real problem is Conor wants to go there every day for his Red Robin usual nutritious lunch.

Restaurants and Food Allergies - Places We Eat, Places We Don't, Places We Wish We Could

Over the weekend my husband Mick asked the repeated question he frequently ask..."Is there anywhere else we can possibly eat besides McDonalds. AGAIN!!" Dining out with food allergies, and especially life threatening peanut allergies is a tricky proposition. I knew I had all sorts of random information on my computer about eating out with food allergies, but had not centralized all of our exciting web friendly restaurant options in one list of allergy friendly restaurants. So everyone, here it is. Places we eat, places we don't and places we wish we could.



Conor's peanut allergy is anaphalytic, so I generally only take him to completely peanut free restaurants. I have a friend who works at one of these restaurants and one night she told me what she thought was a very funny story. This is a sit down restaurant with a separate kitchen, chef and waiter, etc. Anyways, a little boy ordered a hot fudge sundae for his dessert. When he took a bite he told his mother it tasted strange. The mother tasted it, and immediately called over the waiter. Apparently someone in the kitchen had accidentally put teriyaki sauce on the ice cream instead of fudge. Yikes!! This put fear into my little heart. If you can put teriyaki sauce on ice cream, how can I be sure you won't accidentally cross contaminate my son's food despite the fact that I have repeatedly told you about his life threatening peanut allergy.. I figure the only way to be somewhat safe is to have a peanut free restaurant. Then it would be hard (but not impossible) to make this sort of mistake.



Thankfully Conor is not as sensitive to egg, so I am not as concerned about eating out with his egg allergy. I really have no clue how those of you dealing with more serious egg, milk, etc allergies survive. I have trouble just dealing with what is on our plate. (pun intended)

A &W Restaurants
http://www.yum.com/nutrition/allergen/allergen_aw.asp

Arbys
http://www.arbys.com/nutrition/

Burger King
http://www.bk.com/ –

Look for nutrition page has clear allergen info

Chipotle
http://www.chipotle.com/Chipotle_Allergen_Card.pdf
I love Chipotle. It is one of my many peanut free restaurant options. They also are egg free, and no fish free. Since we only have peanut and egg allergies it is one of the few places we can go into, and Conor can eat anything on the menu. Also it is not so fast food yucky, and they have great burritos and chips. Sometimes I even go there alone, just because I like the food, and not because it is the only safe option.

Chuck E Cheese
http://www.chuckecheese.com/menu/allergy-information.php

I was surprised to discover that Chuck E. is actually within our comfort zone. Although it is not my favorite place in the world we went quite a few times over the years. Thankfully recently Conor is deathly afraid of that big scary looking mouse guy, so we have not been in a while. One of the last times we were there, Chucky just seemed a little off. Kids were following him around trying to say hi, and Chucky just wanted to play video games. He is kind of a scary looking mouse......Then I started really looking at those sort of distorted pictures of kids on the walls, and all the lights, loud noises and blinking games, and I started to get a little freaked out myself.

Chili's
http://www.brinker.com/gr/allergens/Chilis%20Allergen.PDF

Dunkin Doughnuts
https://www.dunkindonuts.com/aboutus/nutrition/

Domino's Pizza
http://www.dominos.com/home/menu/dominos_nutrition.pdf

Believe it or not, we now live in an area that Dominos pizza does not deliver to. Can you believe it???? What is this world coming to? Western civilization as we know it is breaking down. We live within 30 or so miles of San Francisco, but no Dominos Pizza here. Before we moved to this Domino's devoid area, we felt it was safe and ordered from them quite a bit.

Jack in the Box
http://www.jackinthebox.com/ourfood/ingredients.php

In and Out Burger http://www.in-n-out.com/
Although they have no ingredient information on their website, I have previously emailed them, and was told there were a peanut free restaurants. The only potential danger was the milk shakes, as they could not verify the source they came from to be free of cross contamination. I have heard that as far as fast food restaurant chains go they are very allergy aware, and have even called people in response to email inquiries. We also eat here way too much, and have never had a problem.

Kentucky Fried Chicken
http://www.yum.com/nutrition/allergen/allergen_kfc.asp

Krispy Kreme
http://www.krispykreme.com/nutri.html
We used to go here when we thought Conor was only allergic to nuts. WoooHooo peanut free doughnuts. It is a great safe dessert option if you are only dealing with nut allergies.
INGREDIENT INFORMATION
The only animal by-products used in our doughnuts are eggs (whites and yolks) and dairy products (including milk, butter, yogurt, whey, nonfat milk and nonfat whey). Our doughnuts are cooked in zero grams trans fat shortening (palm, soybean, and/or cottonseed and canola oil). All monoglycerides and diglycerides are vegetable based. Enzymes are also present. The lecithin we use is soy based. We also use wheat in our doughnuts, including bran, germ, gluten, starch and flour. Our products may contain allergens. To get further information about our products call us at 1-800-4KRISPY.

Macaroni Grill
http://www.brinker.com/gr/allergens/mac%20allergen.pdf

McDonalds
http://www.mcdonalds.com/app_controller.nutrition.categories.ingredients.index.htmlindex.html I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with McDonalds. I love that they are within our comfort zone and we can get safe ice cream and hot fudge sundaes there. I hate most of the food there, and the way they can get my children to beg to go there simply to get the ever exciting Happy Meal toy. Yes, we spend way, way, way to much time at McDonalds. Just be careful if the person at the table next to you happens to open up the sealed package of peanuts with a careless disregard for the peanut allergic.

Outback Steakhouse
http://www.outback.com/foodandmenus/nutritionalinfo.aspx

Papa Johns http://www.papajohns.com/menu/faqs.htm

Pizza Hut
http://www.yum.com/nutrition/allergen/allergen_ph.asp

Quiznos
http://www.quiznos.com/menu/files/allergen_table.pdf

Quiznos has a wonderfully clear allergy table that clearly lays out all the foods that are peanut free, egg free, etc. We have actually never eaten there before, but it appears that they have a peanut free restaurant. Next time we are in the neighborhood we will have to stop by and try it out.

Subway

http://www.subway.com/applications/NutritionInfo/index.aspx

Taco Bell http://www.yum.com/nutrition/allergen/allergen_tb.asp

Taco Bell also appears to have no nuts on their restaurant menu. They also have a great clear allergy page. This is another exciting option for us that I had not really checked into before. Also near where we live is a Taco Bell right on the ocean. It is supposed to have the best view for any fast food restaurant. Ever!!! I know where we are going next time someone is in town for a nice dinner out.

Wendys
http://www.wendys.com/food/Menu.jsp

Blogs
Yes, that is right, someone has actually started a blog dedicated entirely to eating out with food allergies. This blog writer is my hero!! While I love to provide useful information, I also love to write little bizarre antidotes about fictional characters like Mr. Peanut or Mr. Food allergy. She has lists of restaurants in different cities around the country, chains and fast food restaurants with actual quotes from the web sites about their food allergy policies. Go check it out!! It is awesome!!!!.

Can I Eat There
A blog entirely dedicated to eating out with food allergies.
http://canieatthere.blogspot.com/2008/01/national-chains-dine-in.html

People with food allergies should contact restaurants or companies directly to confirm allergen information. Allergy sufferers should check all ingredients before eating, every time. Comments from the Peanut Free Gallery, its authors and contributors, are not responsible for how this information is used or any allergic reactions that occur as a result of using information provided on this site. Comments from the Peanut Free Gallery authors are not, and do not claim to be, doctors, nurses, nutritionists or any type of health care provider/practitioner. The content on this blog should not be considered medical advice.

Those Were the Days

OK, I am actually trying to write something in the 10 seconds that no one is fighting, crying, screaming or pawing all over me. Wish me luck!!!

So, I walked Conor to school yesterday morning, with Michael and Natalie in the stroller. On the way there we met a neighbor with a cute little puppy. She actually stopped her cell phone conversation to talk to us and introduce us to her puppy. She was so nice, let everyone pet the dog, and then pulled out some dog treats and asked if everyone would like to give them to the dog. Of course the first thought in my head is "Oh No!! I wonder if there are peanuts in those" Not sure how to proceed, I sussed out the situation. So do I say something and have this nice woman think I have lost my mind???? Do I stand behind with wipes ready begging Conor to keep his hands out of his mouth until I have wiped him down??? Thankfully the situation worked itself out as Natalie went first, the puppy got all excited and jumped, and Conor decided he was not ready to feed him yet. WHEW!!!

On Saturday we went to a little museum and zoo in Palo Alto so Michael could see a shark. He is very into Sharks these days and since Mick is out of town we thought it would be a good diversion. On our way home we stopped at McDonalds (again......) If only our safe food options weren't so...well......yucky. Anyways, everyone is having their safe hot fudge sundae, when at the table next to us this man opens his hot fudge sundae. Then he opens his wonderfully sealed bag of peanuts, and begins distributing them around on his ice cream as though it is no big deal. Well actually for him it is not big deal, but for us..........AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH...........poison..........YIKES!!!!!!! I stayed calm as I saw a few peanuts fly across the table and onto the floor. I got my wipes ready if needed......... Then I sat there watching that poor poor man with a look of horror on my face. I am sure he was wondering what the insane woman with many small children at the table next to him was looking at, and why she was just staring.....staring.........staring. Of course the poor man has no clue, and why should he. He lives in a world where peanuts are just........well...........another food to be eaten and enjoyed at any whim or whimsy. Oh, those were the days.