Don't Kill the Birthday Girl (16 page)

An assistant tries to hand me a Dixie cup of Carla's soup, but I shake my head. I didn't catch the ingredients. Knowing it was “cooked with love” doesn't quite cover it.

•  •  •

I grew up a conservative eater, slow to expand my palate. Even though I knew to ask for olive oil in restaurants, it wasn't until I was twenty years old, standing at a salad bar and looking down at a bin of chopped black olives, that I thought,
Oh. I bet I can eat those, too
. I avoided eggplant for years, not because I'd had reactions to other nightshade plants but because the echo of
egg
made me nervous. Certain foods, like lobster, were too intimidating to fix at home and too expensive to test in public. I came to appreciate repetition and dishes in which the simplicity is its own aesthetic.

A few years ago, I was at a friend's party and complaining about fusion cuisine. The fusion trend means there is always some nouveau element, such as pesto foam or a garnish of chili-chocolate shavings, that renders a dish deadly in a way
I could not have anticipated from the menu description. I hate taking one look at a plate and sending it back. It's a waste of their food and of my time.

But, oh, sushi! My rant gradually turned into an ode to sushi. Fresh fish, combined in elegant ways according to traditional assembly techniques. No random slices of honeydew. No hoity-toity vinaigrettes. Sushi is safe. Sushi is sacred.

The boyfriend of the hostess, who happened to be the managing editor of a local monthly magazine, proposed that I write a roundup of Washington's sushi joints. My article included instructions on how to handle
nigiri
with chopsticks, orgasmic praise of high-grade salmon sashimi, and an extreme close-up of seaweed salad—tangled and dripping with sesame oil—that would have been at home in an issue of
Penthouse
. Readers responded, and the magazine offered me a regular gig as a reviewer.

It was then I discovered that despite two decades of caution, I loved food. I loved writing about culinary trivia. I relished knowing that the mango was related to the cashew, which was related to the pistachio, facts gathered as part of a know-thy-enemy strategy. I could ask about the base of a Vietnamese
pho
(beef broth? shrimp? vegetable?) not as an allergic obsessive but as a Food Writer.

I invited my family to accompany me on a few “research” meals in the city, relying on their impressions to complement my own. After years of altering her orders so that I could have a taste, my mother welcomed the task of ordering exactly what I
couldn't
have. She was my go-to expert on coconut-crusted shrimp.

My father, perhaps waxing nostalgic for his days in the
army's Psychological Operations unit, seemed to most relish the covert aspect of reviewing. Yet he didn't exactly play it cool; he always made sure to introduce himself to the house manager using his (and my) last name. After one dinner of jerk chicken and fried plantains, he raved about the coffee. A Caribbean import, he could tell. He insisted we find out the blend's name in case I wanted to work it into the review.

The waiter returned shortly. “Maxwell House, sir! Fresh made.”

Much as I enjoyed the gig, I was not destined to be the next Ruth Reichl. The limitations of my abilities became increasingly apparent. I was assigned to review an Italian restaurant specializing in pizza, which I would report in my review served thin crusts “crisped to perfection.” I claimed “to perfection” based on my lunch date liking her Pizza Margherita. She said the mozzarella was “tasty,” which I dutifully recorded.

Tasty. That was all I had to go on. My dish was dry pasta—hold the cheese, hold the chorizo, hold the meat sauce. Definitely not the house specialty. How could I judge them based on that? This wasn't how the chef had designed his flavor profile. This was how I'd forced them to fix it.

My reviews became regurgitated ingredient lists, prettied up with adjectives. Then my editor suggested that I review a new French restaurant. I tried to picture a Gallic meal without butter or cheese or beef, and I told them the jig was up. In two short years, my critical reign had come and gone.

Even the chefs can find themselves on the wrong side of an allergy-unfriendly menu. In a 2009 piece for
The Atlantic
, Ming Tsai—a Chinese-American chef, James Beard Foundation Award-winner, and host of public television's
Simply Ming—
described being turned away from a Massachusetts restaurant based on his five-year-old son's allergies. Before being seated, Tsai asked to speak to a manager and warned him of his son's severe sensitivities to peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, soy, dairy, egg, and shellfish.

“Instead of being greeted with a can-do attitude or any amount of graciousness,” Tsai recounts, “I was literally told ‘We'd prefer not to serve you.' ”

Tsai, now a spokesperson for the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, resolved to change the attitudes of restaurateurs in his home state. At his restaurant Blue Ginger, opened in Wellesley in 1998, Tsai developed a “Food Allergy Reference Book.” This three-ring binder lists the ingredients of every menu item to provide efficient, reliable answers to queries. No more saying, as I have heard so often, “We don't know what's in the soup because the chef is gone for the night.”

From washing dishes to de-croutoning salads to shaking out linen napkins, every aspect of Blue Ginger's service has been refined to head off cross-contamination. Tsai emphasizes that the key to creating a safe kitchen is good (and no-cost) technique, not pricey substitutions. He asks his prep chefs to keep ingredients as separate as possible for as long as possible, a habit already somewhat ingrained in kitchen culture.

“Everyone knows to wash their board and knife thoroughly, if not change out their board entirely, after working with raw chicken because of the risk of salmonella,” Tsai wrote in his article. “At Blue Ginger, every ingredient is raw chicken.”

Thanks in part to lobbying by Tsai and FAAN, in 2009, Massachusetts passed the Food Allergy Awareness Act (Senate Bill 2701). This bill requires all restaurants to display
an allergen awareness poster in the kitchen that details the “big eight” allergens, describes reaction symptoms, and prescribes response protocol. Restaurants must request on their menus that customers inform servers of their allergies before ordering. (This provides some liability protection to the vendors as well.) They must train managers about responding to those with allergy concerns, using a video developed through a partnership with FAAN and the Massachusetts Restaurant Association.

A restaurant that complies with these standards and, in addition, voluntarily develops its own “Food Allergy Reference Book,” is eligible for a “food-allergy friendly” designation from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

Legislations comparable to parts or all of these guidelines have also been introduced in Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. But even where the government has not gotten involved, there is rising awareness of the need for a coordinated response to those with allergies. The National Restaurant Association provides its membership with a free booklet, “Welcoming Guests with Food Allergies,” that articulates some of the delicate cultural issues I've dealt with firsthand. If you've ever identified yourself as a customer with allergies, know that:

Yes, they've been told to give you a knowledgeable, senior contact person for your order. So if you suddenly have a new waiter, it's not some form of rejection.

Yes, they've been told they must discard any accidentally tainted plate and start from scratch. If you suspect this has not happened, you have a right to insist on it. (None of this brushing Parmesan from the rim of the spaghetti plate and serving it
back to me. Vivace in Charlottesville, that's right, I'm looking at you.)

Yes, the ultimate decision on what is “safe” belongs to the customer. If your gut says that the dish they bring out will make you sick—whether because of a botched order or an untrustworthy server—you can politely decline, you should not be billed, and you should not feel guilty.

This last guideline makes me regret all the “absolutely nondairy” sorbets I've been bullied into trying for dessert. I could have saved a lot of time, pain, and money if I'd just given myself permission to say, “Sorry, I don't think that's going to work, after all,” at the sight of a stray swirl of another flavor.

The Culinary Institute of America (CIA), in partnership with the National Peanut Board, offers even more extensive guidance through its website. They are trying to reach the chefs of the future as well as the restaurants of today. Frankly, the industry needs the help. It's a little terrifying to see a survey of one hundred dining establishments, conducted by the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in which 24 percent believes “a small amount is safe” and 35 percent believe fryer heat destroys allergens. For me, the latter is particularly troubling when it comes to menus that offer deep-fried shrimp or fried mozzarella sticks alongside French fries.

The CIA site breaks it down, rule by rule: Do not reuse pasta water that was used to cook cheese-filled gnocchi. Do not reuse a cutting board that hosted Asiago bread. Know that cold cuts of mortadella sausage carry traces of nuts, and that fake crab often contains fish and egg. Don't forget the cheese hidden in a pesto that may have been made earlier in the day.
Wheat shows up in soy sauce, bouillon cubes, and ice cream. If someone orders chicken and is allergic to beef, check before using the same grill surface.

One CIA webpage is devoted to easy variations on proteins and spreads. Adapting recipes for allergies is presented not as a compromise of one's techniques but as a further dimension of knowing one's way around the kitchen. Anyone can hold the tofu on a dish for someone allergic to soy. A superior chef might know his options well enough to offer cubes of
paneer
(pressed Indian cheese) instead. Or, in my case, a chef might offer to substitute for something creamy by using a base of pureed avocado.

Safety is a right, not a luxury, though sometimes the phrasing of well-meaning restaurateurs conflates the two. I was thrilled when the innovative Spanish chef José Andrés's Think-FoodGroup announced menus designed for those with allergies. That said, I had to giggle at their come-hither line on behalf of Café Atlántico.

“The tantalizing
Sandwich de Salmón con Malagueta
, an entrée of seared salmon with salmon salad, cucumber and mixed chips is a great choice for those allergic to dairy, soy, peanuts and tree nuts,” the media release promised. Never has someone attempted to make accommodation sound so seductive.

“Oyamel's tortillas are made with corn, the ideal choice for guests avoiding wheat or gluten. Oyamel offers nine different taco options from
Tacos de Chapulines
, the legendary specialty from Oaxaca of sautéed grasshoppers, to
Carnitas con salsa de tomatillo
, confit of baby pig with green tomatillo sauce.”

Finally! Grasshoppers and confit of baby pig for the rest of us. I had dreamed this day would come.

Pricey boutique entrées are one thing. What about chain restaurants? Fast food? Although sensitivity to other allergies is still developing, I've found gluten-free menus everywhere from Maggiano's Little Italy to Red Robin to Wendy's to P.F. Chang's China Bistro. At every price point, restaurants are realizing a safe customer is a repeat customer. Even Uno Chicago Grill has come up with not one but two gluten-free pizza choices.

One collaboration between the food-allergic and restaurant communities has been taking place in New York City, where “Allergic Girl” Sloane Miller has been organizing her “Worry-Free Dinner” series and membership group since 2008. Partnering with prominent venues such as Tom Colicchio's Craftbar, Miller has coordinated multicourse menus specific to particular food allergies—meaning that for a night, an entire restaurant might become peanut or dairy free. These events double as opportunities to network with other food-allergic folks and to learn Miller's tips on how to better communicate your allergy-based needs to those in the restaurant industry. For example, don't order something “plain,” which is subject to interpretation by your server. Order it “only”; i.e., “Only grilled chicken and lettuce, please.”

As encouraging as these breakthroughs in eating out are, to focus on them is to dance around a personal reality. I'm no longer the teenager looking for a safe place to snack with friends at the mall. I'm no longer a twentysomething with scads of disposable income. I'm at a point when I want to serve food, on my own table, rather than be served by a waiter. I want to cook.

For years I dated a man named Adam, who I had first met in the Jefferson Society at UVA. Before we moved in together, back
when I lived with a roommate who monopolized the kitchen, Adam and I would go out for brunch. We would straggle the eight blocks from my place down to the Luna Grill and Diner, where our usual grizzled waitress would bring us coffee and then ask, “You set for now? I'm stepping out for a cigarette.” Adam would order waffles or pancakes, slathered in butter, or eggs, folded with cheese, and I would get cinnamon-raisin oatmeal with a side of bacon.

I don't miss paying four dollars for bacon or eight dollars for oatmeal, but I miss that ritual of brunch. That said, eggs? Waffles? Pancakes? I'll never be someone who can whip up a proper brunch at home. My allergies forbid it.

Or do they?

•  •  •

“Honey, I need you to do me a big favor,” I told Adam, walking toward his desk. “I'll pay for the whole thing.”

He rolled his chair back and looked up at me with alarm. “What?”

“Do this brunch thing with me. A cooking class.”

“Oh.” His eyes returned to the laptop screen, where he was toggling back and forth between various Xbox help-boards for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. “Sure. I thought it was going to be something a lot weirder than that.”