Is there any gluten in this Elephant?

[Sharon]

About six months ago, when the phrase “gluten free” was still quite new to my husband Shane and I, my mom and nephew came to visit us. We wanted to go out to dinner but had some trepidation due to Shane’s gluten allergy. After deliberating a bit, we concluded there would have to be some options available if we chose wisely from the menu. So we decided on Elephant Bar, a newcomer to our area with reasonable prices and a cool vibe. Shortly after being seated, my husband decided on a bun-less cheeseburger. When the server came to take our order, my husband asked if the fries were gluten free. Now this is an interesting thing I’ve noticed about a number of servers since dealing with this food allergy – they answer questions that they clearly don’t know the answers to and they typically will say what they think you want to hear. I like to think of this as a sort of natural optimism on their parts, that they truly desire the food to be gluten free. And maybe they even believe on some level that if they say it is, it will be so - the kind of positive professing promoted by talk show hosts and televangelists. But anyone with a food allergy knows that if the allergen is in their food, no amount of saying it isn’t will prevent a reaction.
So although our Elephant Bar server didn’t know for certain if the fries were gluten free, he still claimed that they “should be” and I can’t argue with that because I do believe that potatoes, oil and salt – none of which contain any gluten naturally – should be gluten free. But for health’s sake you really do have to argue semantics in these situations. So Shane pushed a bit and asked if the fries were cooked in the same oil as breaded foods like chicken fingers. With this, our server had to abandon his attempt to put gluten free French fries out into the universe and admit he’d have to check with the manager who had to check with the chef who apparently reported that the fries were indeed cooked in their own separate oil because that is what we were told. And so, fries were added to the order in the time it takes most families to eat their meals.

After the fact, the question remains: were we misinformed about the fries or was there gluten hiding in some other seemingly innocent ingredients such as beef, cheese or onions? It is difficult to know for sure but the bottom line is that my husband did indeed have a reaction to his meal – tight chest, shortness of breath, weakness – which unfortunately put him out of commission for most of our family’s visit.

Elephant Bar currently states the following on their web site under Nutritional Info: At present, we do not have complete nutritional analysis of our menu. Our wait staff will be more than happy to assist you in selecting lighter fare menu items if you wish. In addition, we are willing to alter, modify, and/or omit ingredients of most menu items to allow you to stay within any required guidelines.

In our widening experience of having a food allergy and dining out, that last sentence would be an ambitious statement for the vast majority of restaurants to make. It is even more ambitious for a restaurant that, by its own admission, doesn’t know the nutritional content of the food it is serving. If they can’t even tell me how many calories are in a dish, how confident can I be that they know about cross-contamination and allergens?

It’s not my intention to single out Elephant Bar – they are merely indicative of the very low standard of food allergy awareness that is rampant in the American restaurant industry as a whole. But I particularly dislike their stated policy because it leads people to believe they are aware of such issues and can accommodate their needs. It gives people with food intolerances and allergies false hope that they can go out to dinner on a Friday night like normal people. That their time together might actually be centered on catching up and enjoying one another’s company instead of waiting for reports from the kitchen about what is safe to eat and then wondering if the reports are true. It is experiences such as this one that reduce dining out to merely the biological function of eating – which for us makes Elephant Bar’s pachyderm mascot a very relatable character.