"Are you allergic to anything?"

is a question which does need to be asked. I always ask it if I am inviting someone to share food with me - even just a biscuit at afternoon tea time.

There is a piece in this morning's paper about just this. One of the city's better known chefs, a man who has appeared in a television series, is talking about people who go to a restaurant to eat and say they are "allergic" to this or that or something else.

Genuine allergies can be life threatening. My niece-in-law carries an Epipen. She has a life threatening allergy to all nuts - except peanuts. Yes, it is the reverse to most "nut allergies". 

If she went to the restaurant the chef works at and told the staff this - and perhaps even produced the Epipen - I have no doubt at all the staff would do their best to accommodate her needs. That's absolutely the right thing to do.

What the chef was complaining about is people who say they are "allergic" to something but in reality they simply don't like  something.  They want the menu changed for them. They want things to be "gluten free" because they have decided to "go gluten free" rather than for some good medical reason. They don't like garlic so they ask for the dish to be cooked without garlic when garlic is an integral part of it.

I am allergic to vinegar, alcohol and some sulphites. Those things won't kill me if I accidentally ingest them but they will make me very uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that I won't enjoy a meal at all. It is also likely that, with some sulphites, I will have difficulty actually swallowing. That's serious enough for me to let people know. It's a nuisance but it is not like the reaction of my niece-in-law.

There are other reasons to ask for special consideration at a restaurant.  Years ago I went out with a group of profoundly physically disabled young people. One of them was able to eat only things like mashed potato. We called ahead and explained the situation. I will never forget listening to the response. It went something like, "Hang on. I'll get the chef. He's just come in."

The chef came on the line. The situation was explained and the response was, "Just potato? I could do that but... I could add mashed pumpkin and - if I sieve everything?"

On the evening in question the young man who needed the mashed potato had a plate with potato, pumpkin, egg custard and some sort of puree on it. His face was a picture. He couldn't speak but his grin was thanks enough.  That sort of consideration is worth more than a more "normal" person will ever realise. It was service above and beyond what we expected and a very special occasion they all remembered.

So, I am with the chef on this. If we are heading out to a restaurant we need to choose from the menu, and choose accordingly. The chef is there to feed us. It is his or her job. It is what they are trained to do. If we really need some special consideration then it is fine to ask and it is likely it will be accommodated because no restaurant wants an emergency to occur.

But if there are broad beans (fava beans) on the plate then I will eat them - even though I do not care for the texture of them and would never cook them for myself.