Are you allergic to food intolerances?

I have a love/hate relationship with clams. I love them, they hate me violently. I discovered this the hard way years ago after a plate of linguine with clams in Italy. Years later, I had to literally sprint from the table of a Michelin starred restaurant in Barcelona after unknowingly scoffing one. This is an allergy. For whatever reason, my body hits the reject button immediately when one of these creatures reaches my stomach. I've lived without them for years and truth be told, it's no real hardship.

Other people are not so lucky with their food allergies and intolerances. I couldn't imagine for example, not being able to enjoy the simple pleasure of freshly baked bread due to gluten intolerance. I know people who genuinely suffer from coeliac disease and it really is an awful affliction. I've also encountered people who think they suffer from coeliac disease but regularly bend the rules to suit themselves with little or no consequence. These fair weather food fadists devalue the plight of genuine sufferers.

Talk to anyone in the restaurant business and they will tell you about the explosion in food intolerances over the last few years. Every conceivable dietary requirement is being catered for on a daily basis. The majority of restaurants are happy to oblige, especially when given advance notice. It can be a difficult task for a restaurant when it is announced as the order is being taken. Opinions on the issue are many and varied, especially when you speak to chefs about it. Some are just prepared to cook what they have on the menu and view all requests for variations as an inconvenience.

In his excellent book It Must Have Been Something I Ate , Jeffrey Steingarten talks about the rise of food intolerances in the U.S in the late 1990s. He refers to a huge study into the effects of lactose intolerance, the largest of it's kind ever carried out. Of those who were chosen for the experiment, half were given lactose and half a placebo. The results showed that a sizeable portion of those given the placebo reported the same symptoms as those given the lactose. The overall findings were that approximately 2% of the huge sample presenting with lactose intolerance actually were genuine cases.

My advice on the issue to restaurants is always clear cut. Your default position should be "yes we can". The customer should always come first and the objective should be to make sure everyone leaves the restaurant happy.  I used to drill into my staff that "no" should not be in their vocabulary unless every possible effort has been made to satisfy a guest's request. The majority of people will appreciate the effort and leave the restaurant happy and those who don't are usually beyond pleasing anyway. Not everyone in the business I speak to agrees with my position on this. Many feel that dropping everything in the middle of service to meet an unannounced off piste request compromises the service for all of the other guests in the room. I understand this point of view completely and if the service is going to go down to meet the needs of one guest, then of course it can not be done. However, in my experience this is a rare occurrence and should not be used as a convenient excuse.

The guests themselves have a role to play in making sure that they have the best possible experience when they visit a restaurant. If you have specific dietary requirements, you should give the restaurant as much notice as possible in advance of your reservation. This is not only basic good manners but will also be to the mutual benefit of all concerned. I vividly recall a lady one Saturday evening who announced when her order was being taken that she was vegan but also severely intolerant to gluten. It was 8.30pm and the restaurant was full to capacity with plenty of people still to arrive later. Needless to say the first response from the kitchen was unrepeatable but after a few minutes negotiation I went back to the table with the following three dishes for her:

• Gluten free crostini with broad beans, mint and extra virgin olive oil
• Griddled spiced aubergines with smoked potato & chick pea salad and salsa verde ( no anchovies)
• Roasted pineapple with  fresh coconut purée

Hardly life changing dishes but delicious and a decent effort under the circumstances, I thought. She seemed happy enough and ate everything but two days later I received a stinker of a letter from her saying how she was disgusted that no choice was offered to her and only ate what she was given because she didn't want to make a fuss in front of her guests. I replied that I was sorry she felt that way but we had done our best under the circumstances and with prior notice in the future could offer her a choice of dishes. She replied that she would never be back so it wasn't an issue. I chalked it down to experience but it cemented for me that the guest in these situations could help themselves considerably by letting the restaurant know in advance.

My feeling is that food intolerances, both genuine and otherwise, are here to stay. Restaurants can help themselves by having good quality vegetarian and gluten free options on their menus as standard ( a break from beetroot and goats cheese would be good too!). In addition, put some thought and imagination into a few vegan and dairy free dishes that you can call on at short notice. You will never please everyone but being somewhat prepared in advance will take the sting out of creating ad hoc dishes without prior notice and will give your guests a more enjoyable dining experience. Surely that can only be a good thing.