There are times when we question the things we know

[venta]

Hello! If you are a person with complicated dietary requirements, maybe you can give me some advice.

My dance team organises an event once a year (it's this Sunday, in Oxford, if you want to come along). It takes the form of a pub crawl, with dancing. At the final pub, people settle down for a chat and so on, and we provide home-made cake. We make sure that there is at least some gluten-free and some dairy-free cake, for people who eat that sort of thing.

However, for the past few years the landlord of the pub has started providing food as well. Not only does he let us use the function room for no cost he provides, at his own expense, food of the bucket-o'-stew variety. I think providing food (one meat option, one veggie, plus rice) for around a hundred people is jolly decent of him.

However, last year I got quite a mouthful from one of the attendees because their dietary requirements were not met by either of the options. If we were providing formal catering and charging people, I would expect to have asked in advance what people's requirements were, and tried to ensure they were all met. However, when the catering is being done entirely as a good-will gesture, I don't feel we can really present the landlord with a list of complicated requirements (last year I think the veggie option was also GF and DF, which I'd thought was pretty good already).

So... the details for the event say that the landlord will be providing food. I'd like to add something along the lines of this being a couple of basic options, provided by him for free, and that it might not be suitable for everyone. I have no idea how to phrase this, and don't want to sound like I'm dismissing people with detailed food constraints - I'd just like everyone to feel that they've been properly informed about what they can expect.

Alternatively, if you think I'm being unreasonable (from my privileged perspective of someone who can pretty much bite into anything without worrying) then please say so.

If it's relevant, the pub does also serve a regular pub menu (pub classics, sarnies, jacket spuds etc), and people are welcome to order their own food.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Did you tell them that he's doing it for free for a hundred people? Because if you did and they still gave you an earful, they are being a dick about it. I would say it just like you have, and add the bit about the pub serving food (with a link to the menu if this is online). It would also be helpful to ask the landlord to tell you in advance what's going to be in the bucket o'stew, so that people can plan ahead, which is the most important bit. I guess if the person was so hungry they were a bit dizzy and then surprise! couldn't eat what was there and couldn't think clearly to figure out another option because hungry, it might explain why they got angry.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, having spoken to them on a few occasions since, I think they are just inclined to be grumpy about everything ;)

But yes, advance info would be useful. Though I wonder that in the circs it might be "whatever is going that needs eating on the day" :-)

[ailbhe]

I'd definitely want it made clear that the landlord is giving the event free food, over which the organizers have no control and which may not cater to specific allergies or intolerances. The law is a little different this year, too, in that comprehensive allergy information *must* be available on request.

It's very isolating and miserable to be unable to join in major social events. A lot of human social interaction is built around eating together and spending half of the time establishing which (if any) of the "dig in, help yourselves" I can actually eat, and then making arrangements if I can't have any of it or there isn't enough because by the time I've checked the ingredients all the GF/DF/soy-free dish is gone anyway, spoils things. I'd rather know in advance and order my jacket potato with no toppings (sending back the first one because they put butter on it) and at least get to eat *with* people.

Two things make a huge difference: (1) early serving for people with special dietary requirements, such as allergies or vegan/vegetarian diets, with the eat-anythings waiting their turn, and (2) clear labeling at the place where food is obtained, not in a massive lever-arch binder none of the staff know how to look through which is anyway kept on a high shelf in a kitchen two floors away and which only specifies one set of allergies at a time, ie notes *either* GF *or* DF but not both without manual cross-referencing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your thoughts - I'm not sure how much I do about (2), since I'm not very in control of what the pub does with its labelling. I'll need to call into the pub on the Sunday morning anyway, so will attempt to acquire details (if we can't get them any further in advance) so I can at least let people know.

[ailbhe]

Realistically (2) isn't up to you, but they may already label food (see under, new laws) and be able to easily do it for this too. Possibly the simplest thing to do would be to send people a link to the usual pub menu and say "We'll be given some food but we won't know in advance what it is, here's the usual menu so you can plan what to order if you need specific dietary requirements met."

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's a good way of going about it.

Not really relevantly: a while ago I was somewhere where there were cupcakes on offer. The baker also bakes semi-professionally, so had done a proper checky-box list of allergens to display. Except the cakes actually didn't contain any of the 16 (errr, is it 16? I can't remember) allergens you have to warn about.

Accordingly, not being familiar with these lists, I interpreted it as a bullet-point list (the unchecked check boxes just looked like square bullet points). OK, so these cakes contain gluten, fair enough. Eggs, OK. Dairy, no surprises. Soy? Wasn't really expecting that. Celery? Fish? Molluscs? What the hell are these things that look like cupcakes...

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Bivalve cupcakes?!

In fact this thread underlines the need to let people state our requirements. Ticky boxes are often more hindrance than help.

Eg yyour mention of cupcakes suggests a menu item I'd avoid. Gluten-free or dairy-free wouldn't have made any difference. Anything made from flour - esp wheat flour - is risky for me. But risky, not banned entirely. 100% rye sourdough bread is part of my staple diet. Wholemeal wheat bread is not. This makes sense: I have IBS, not coeliac disease.

If I'd been at your buffet I'd have eaten a postage-stamp sized piece of bread, esp if slathered with butter, maybe dipped in gravy. I'd have declined rice but if one of the stews had included potatoes I'd have scoffed a full portion. Unless it'd included more than a tiny bit of cabbage, cauliflower or asparagus.

Oh the joy of disability ;-)

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Would that mean that most people were offered a free meal, but those with 'special requirements' would have to pay?

I was in a situation like this while my cousin planned his wedding. The caterers provided the menu for their restaurant, but detail of ingredients for the wedding buffet wasn't available. I had to ask people to push my wheelchair from table to table while I tasted dishes and chose which to eat. In the end I didn't have to bring out the boring packed lunch from my bag, and everybody supported what I was doing, but for another person that could have been embarrassing. For somebody with an allergy, I dread to think.

[ailbhe]

I've reached the point where if there's *one* thing *in the restaurant* which I can eat without being sick, I'm almost pleased. So often there's nothing at all.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

What do you do?

[(Anonymous)]

If I know there's nothing, I eat first. If it's a surprise, I stay hungry and cranky. Some places don't mind if I eat cereal bars from my bag.

[ailbhe]

Er, that was me.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Is it possible for you to inform people of the menu before the event? If I were coming, that's what I'd seek. I can glance at a menu and judge which items will or won't be digestible for me. A simple choice of gluten-free or dairy-free might suit some people very well but it wouldn't suit me.

You could also ask the landlord to provide a tasting option on the day. For me that would be about testing how spicy the dishes were. For others, perhaps something else entirely.

More than anything I'd like to know that you're informing people, thus including people.

[venta.livejournal.com]

We've never known in advance what the food was going to be (in fact, we didn't used to know for sure each year that it was going to be there at all - food just used to turn up when we arrived). I believe Ali has confirmed this year that there will be food. I'll get our team's contact to ask if he can let us know details.

The food is very informal - large stay-warm urns of stew are parked on a table with plastic bowls/cutlery and people help themselves to what they want, so ladling out a taster is certainly an option. Also, the attendees are mostly people who know each other pretty well, so I've certainly seen people dipping spoons in each other's bowls to try in the past (plus generally fetching and carrying for each other depending on who's trapped in a corner/holding a baby/whatever).

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for other people with dietary requirements, but anything which is being mass-catered, particularly of the type you mention, is likely not to have anything much that I can eat, so sight of the pub's menu would be useful in deciding whether I needed to factor in time to get food somewhere else. I'm used to this with the other kind of pub-mass-catering which can best be described as "deep-fried everything" -- it's not that I object to deep-fried stuff but it does tend to be a bit carb-heavy.

But then I wouldn't be able to eat the cake either, so I'd be entirely used to it ;)

[erming.livejournal.com]

I always like to know what is going to be there, but have checked first and brought my own to a few events.

So at one wedding while everyone else was tucking into the curry provided by the bride and groom I was tucking into sushi.

But basically if you know that there is going to be nothing you can eat you can bring your own. I did get grumpy at a company meal recently (as did a devout muslim and a vegan) because when we looked at the menu we were emailed by the organiser of the meal there wasn't a huge amount we could eat but a couple of options. We asked if we could have the options as they were pricey and were told that was fine. Get to the meal and the restaurant provided us with a party menu where there was nothing that we could eat on it.[

[deborahw37.livejournal.com]

Would the landlord be OK with you bringing some salad, rice cakes, fruit etc to add to the buffet?

As for info I'd just say " The landlord provides, free of charge, a limited menu; we can't guarantee that it will meet all dietary requirements so why not bring something veggie/ gluten free/ nut free/ whatever along to share?

[ebee.livejournal.com]

As someone who is a right pain over food I'd never expect to find more than a meaty and veggie option when out. If there is vegan, well that's lovely and generous and gluten free is equally. But for free food? If you need more specific than veggie (which I recon is pretty main stream) then blooming bring your own!