We all know what the 8 most common allergens identified by the FDA are, and even the not so common are as serious. It takes a lot of training to get your staff understand why it is so important serving safe and allergen-free food to our guests. It takes even more to ensure that we think through the entire process from receiving, storage preparation, cooking all the way to serving to be at least 100 percent sure we did not miss one detail that could have contaminated the food with an allergen. And most of the time we get less than a few minutes notice to do so, especially during larger banquets. While taking every request serious there as so many out there where even I have to scratch my head asking myself: “You are seriously allergic to…”

Over the last year we had quite some interesting situations and you are the judge. Maybe I miss a detail here and please let me know if I do.

A typical steak and potato dinner for approximately 300 guests, literally on the last plate we dish up we get a request for a plate without potatoes because of an allergy. I ask the server to go back and verify with the guest, if it was a preference or an allergy, and if it was an allergy that we take this request very serious and will immediately cook an entire new meal without potatoes, which should not take more than 12 minutes. The guests repsonse: I am mortally allergic to potatoes! Make sure the meat never touched potatoes.  I have not heard of potato allergy yet, though taking the request serious we cut another tenderloin steak and start cooking the vegetables, when after less than 4 minutes the server comes back the guests demands her plate and why it would take so long. Furthermore the guest suggested it could not be that hard to remove a couple of fingerling potatoes of the plate.

On another occasion after serving a seafood gumbo as a first course on a mardi gras themed dinner menu we are half way through serving the entree, when I get the request for and PB&J sandwich for a guests highly allergic to garlic. My heart stopped and immediately called the hotels command center to place the 911 call. Highly allergic to garlic. This one I heard before and they can be an allergy, though most of the times it is a preference, we do not want to take any chances and wait for the guest to lie on the floor with cardiac arrest. Why my panic? there were 4lbs of garlic in the 80 gallons of gumbo we just served and this particular guest asked for a second. After informing the guests paramedics are about to be called, the guest assured us that it was not necessary, though insisted on a PB&J sandwich since the demi glace served with the main course was likely to contain garlic.

I understand that many requests claiming an allergy have true other reasons. Alcohol allergy are often claimed by guests not being able to metabolize alcohol or guest of Muslim faith, who do not feel comfortable to disclose their religious belief in front of others. Same for bacon or pork allergy. Especially with alcohol we have trained our service staff to inquire about pork products as well saving them a trip to tell the kitchen. We do take religious requests as serious as allergic requests.

We had them all gluten-free/celiac disease, nuts, raisins, lactose, fish, shellfish, soy, onion, tomato, eggs and all the others. But please can somebody enlighten me what a Caesar dressing allergy is? I asked what in particular the guest was allergic to in the caesar dressing so we could be already prepared for the following courses which could have the same ingredients; is is the fish/anchovies, the eggs or maybe the acidity of the vinegar that could cause discomfort or even an allergic reaction to the guest? The response was that it was a stupid question for the kitchen to ask, and if we never have heard of “caesar dressing allergy”. Honestly, never. First time.

How about the person with the nut allergy, for a group in house for 4 days. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Every food on each buffet has to be labeled. Anything without nuts had to be labeled as well. Yet on the last day at the afternoon break the person must have been miraculously healed, because the consumption of the nuts on the haagen-dazs ice cream bar, even though properly labeled, did not seemingly cause an allergic reaction.

Or the raisin allergy where oatmeal cookies are okay to consume? anybody heard of that one yet?

Again we take requests serious, though it is hard to take a person serious that makes claims on on hand thought actions speak differently. And while I could care less for whatever reasons allergy claims are made I would prefer they were called differently. Please don’t take away the edge we have build through continuous training of our staff to the point they get dull and we miss the beat with the one person who is truly allergic to any particular food. Just say what it is, you don’t like potatoes, we remove them. You Don’t like how garlic makes your mouth smell, just order without garlic. You want a balsamic dressing for your salad, ask for it, don’t come up with the Caesar dressing allergy. Working in kitchens is hard enough we don’t need any additional non-sense.

To be fair to those guests who may not have an true allergy though can not metabolize foods or have true problems digesting them. Say you are allergic it is your best and safest bet. Don’t try to explain in medical terms why you cant digest certain foods.

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Kriss is right when he made the claim, that there are many desserts made, where each component is exceptional good when tasted individually, though once on the plate they seem our of balance. One thing I will have to keep in mind for the future, as I am as guilty as charged of the very same.

Cherry Ice Cream, Pistachio Custard, Warm Ricotta Espuma and Frozen Adeche Honey

Flam Evolution with Iced Coconut Dust, Coconut Cream Rocks, Jade Shortbread and Coffee

Whipped Milk Xocolate, Crunchy Praline with Kikos, Iced Coffee Crystals

Spicy Yogurt Ice Cream, Black Sesame, Lime, Passion fruit and Pineapple

As my sous chef and I think about what we can do, and that we probably wont have much time other than grilling four burgers at a time on those mini grills on the beach, we already see ourselves doing just that for 60 other managers and supervisors, unless we take a chance and hand over the zepter once in a while. Past has though us that everybody things of himself as the ultimate grill master, and every time it ended in a disaster. After a few ideas what we can do, realizing that we wont bring one of our RATIONAL combi ovens and absolutely trying to avoid dragging our over sized propane grill to the beach and then back, I though of vacuum packing the burgers cooking them in the kitchen, blast chilling them and taking them to the beach. All we would need to have to do is to throw them on the grill, bring them up to temp and serve. Would it work? Who knows there is only one way to find out, that is to try it out. We tried a few different temperatures as well as using raw frozen and plain raw patties.

Personally I would go with the 55C frozen patty, though already can see the grief or the burger being too rare. The frozen 58C seem to be a happy medium and there are always a few who want hockey pucks so we might as well cook a few up to 60C or even 65C.

The interesting thing though even the cooking time between the raw and frozen patties, like the 55C and holding them the required 121 minutes once the temperature is reached was not that big, less than 20 minutes, thought the difference was enormous. First of all the raw patties all felt unpleasantly mushy, and we had a hard time grilling them, they broke easily and did not show any uniform grill marks, where as the frozen patties held up much better and did show uniform grill marks.

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After the first demo of Pacojet with Kriss, I asked him what the difference was and how often we hear the such and such recipe does not work? Looking at the recipes in the handouts and adding up all sugars, waters, fats and other solids I did not see any difference in the ratios than any other properly calculated/balanced recipe. The answer was as simple as it was surprising. There are many ice creams, gelati or sorbetti made without a balanced/ratio based recipes. What is there left to say other than: get a scale and a calculator an start balancing your recipes.