Wednesday, May 07, 2008

The joys of being truly taken care of...


On the first night of our trip, allergic mom and I went to King of Prussia for dinner, and ended up at Legal Sea Foods, an upscale seafood restaurant that has locations all over the eastern U.S.


I informed our server, Brian, that I had severe allergies, and asked if it would be possible to have my tuna steak grilled with no oil or spices, and so that it didn't come into contact with anything else?

I braced myself for the response. Brian said "Actually, I can do you one better. What we usually do for our allergic patrons (I didn't interrupt at this point and inform him I was THE Allergic Diner, it seemed rude) is place your fish in a skillet as opposed to directly on the grill or our wood planks, and cook it with an herb vinaigrette that contains no dairy. This way it doesn't come into contact with anything you might be allergic to. For you, we can do the fish this way but totally plain so that you don't have to worry about spices or oil in the vinaigrette." Seriously? Would one of you inform me if I was dead and this was heaven? What a weekend this was!


About 10 minutes after we placed our order, a manager, Jeff, came over and introduced himself and asked me to list my allergies (Brian had previously done the same, so it was obvious to this allergic diner that they were double checking for safety and cross-contamination). He spent a minute or two with me to make sure I was comfortable, and then went back to the kitchen to personally oversee the process.


I ate the delicious meal, a medium-rare tuna steak and baked potato, along with some of their fresh bread, without taking A SINGLE PILL. No dairy, no allergens, so why take medicine I don't need?


I thought that was the perfect meal, and as allergic mom and I were squabbling over who was going to pay the check (and lest you think ill of me, we were fighting because we both wanted to pay), Brian came back and offered us dessert. I was so full I couldn't even dream of it, but he insisted that he had a gluten-free option that might interest me, as well as a sugar free option. I thought that was very sweet that he was letting me know that they could find a way to accommodate me. Though I declined, I made up my mind to not only give them an outstanding review, but to forward this post to their customer service.


In a review of their website, I noticed they have a gluten-free menu as well. Here's a link to all their menus. It was the perfect dinner to start the perfect weekend with allergic mom. There was NO allergy alert or allergy problems ALL weekend.


Thank you so very much Legal Sea Foods, for putting this food-allergic diner at ease,

~The Allergic Diner

6 comments:

Allergic Girl® said...

i LOVE this story. now if i could only eat fish. :-)

allergic diner said...

I kid you not, the allergic gods were smiling on me last weekend!

Anonymous said...

Wow. That's great service. I bet they treat their non-allergic diners well too- good to know.

allergic diner said...

Welcome to the blog! And you're correct, they definitely do. I hope you had a nice weekend

Unknown said...

WOW I came across this site by accident looking for nutritional info about burger king (and I dont have flash at work so couldn't do the website) since my son has allergies to eggs, dairy, peanuts, treenuts and cherries (has outgrown soy potato and wheat YEAH) and he had a burger the other day on a sesame seed roll and got hives and was ill so I guess sesame seeds are out too. I SWEAR I asked the restaraunt owner 20 million questions about cross contamination and ingredients since it was a first time visit for him.. oh well..

Anyway.. thanks for the info.. I'm in Delaware so KOP isnt too far (about 30 minutes) and red lobster scares the beejeezus out of me for some reason and I wont take him. I'll have to try here!

allergic diner said...

Luv -
I'm glad you found this helpful. Congrats on your son outgrowing those three major ones! Definitely try this place. It was incredible.
Best of luck to you!