It takes some time to fully understand how different allergies, intolerances, or autoimmune problems affect different people, so the best thing to do is to teach your staff to know what is in the food

Over the weekend, I spent the entire Saturday lying in bed, suffering from accidentally ingesting gluten. 

Eight years ago, I was experiencing very strange symptoms that included a bloated belly, mouth sores that would come in clusters of four or five, and a constant cough, cold, or sore throat. I was like this for about a year until I saw an immunologist. After several tests, I came out positive in the celiac test. From that day on, I have been living gluten-free, at some point even carrying around a card that explained what gluten was (at the suggestion of my husband) because eating out in Manila with untrained staff in the restaurants is quite literally, life-threatening.

After getting more thorough tests, I was thankful to find out I did not have a pure celiac disease, wherein the gut is damaged inside and you are unable to absorb vitamins among other things, but instead have something in between a non-celiac gluten sensitivity and pure celiac disease as I tested positive on the celiac panel, but do not have all the antibodies to qualify as pure celiac. 

It takes some time to fully understand how different allergies, intolerances, or autoimmune problems affect different people, so the best thing to do is to teach your staff to know what is in the food. 

For me, the reactions I have are debilitating and span about a week, starting with my stomach turning, nausea, vomiting, and sometimes my throat feeling tight, followed by abdominal pain and bloating. A few days later, mouth sores appear in clusters. While it’s not the scary anaphylaxis or my face swelling up, it’s debilitating and creates inflammation. One bite of gluten results in days of discomfort and pain. Others will have other reactions. 

Over the years, I have come to only eat in a handful of restaurants that I trust to know what gluten is or respect food allergies. Because of the way our food is farmed, the state of the environment, and its pollutants, more and more people are emerging with different food intolerances. 

With wheat, for example, modern breeding methods breed it to have increased levels of tryptophan to increase nutritional value, but this also increases gluten content. The increased use of herbicides that contain glyphosate has also been linked to the increased gluten sensitivity that more people are displaying. 

All over the world, restaurants have come to respect that, properly training the staff, labeling menus properly, and being careful with cross contamination; everywhere but in the Philippines. 

With the culinary scene on the rise, I don’t understand why our standards in food safety have not followed. Once, we were out with a child who had an allergy to shrimp, they ordered Bolognese, which would not normally contain any shrimp, so we thought it was safe. When the child had a severe reaction, the server then told us that the broth in the sauce was made with shrimp skin and heads. I suppose this is done to enhance the flavor, and every restaurant is entitled to create their food as they please, but not to inform the customer of this is negligence. 

All over the world, restaurants have come to respect that, properly training the staff, labeling menus properly, and being careful with cross contamination; everywhere but in the Philippines. 

It is only in Manila where I have seen bread labeled “gluten-free,” but not show the list of ingredients in it, nor have clear markings on the bag. When asked about the ingredients, the staff in the stall said they used regular flour, but the bread was sourdough, so it is gluten-free. This is not true.

In a Mexican restaurant, after asking several times if their tortillas were made using pure corn flour, they said yes, only for me to find out three tacos in that they mix flour with corn flour. 

For one dish, it said the fajitas came with corn tortillas, but when asked, the staff said “We’re actually using flour tortillas.” The two are NOT interchangeable. 

I’ve also heard horror stories of peanuts hiding in the dessert, even if the customer specified a peanut allergy. 

Restaurants cannot gauge how severe a customer’s reaction will be to an ingredient. We are far away from the kitchens abroad that have a separate “allergy kitchen” to mitigate cross-contamination. While we aren’t there, please, train your staff. 

Perhaps restaurants here do not find it important to train their staff on what food allergies are, but the ones that do, definitely stand out. It is time for restaurants in Manila to take note and teach staff about food allergies, not just for the safety of their customers, but to be able to level up their service. 

Most of the time, servers in restaurants do not know the source of these common allergens, and the management is to blame for the lack of training.  Most people who have food allergies are very careful of what they order, but we also rely on the servers to know what is in the food, or if there is a particular ingredient that may contain an allergen. If the restaurants don’t help their staff to learn, having them ask “Do you have any allergies?” is for naught, and becomes more infuriating when a dish with an allergen is served. 

It is time for restaurants in Manila to take note and teach staff about food allergies, not just for the safety of their customers, but to be able to level up their service.

Here is a cheat sheet of the very basic allergens that I hope you can use to teach your staff.

Gluten

Gluten is a protein that comes from wheat, barley, and rye. These can be found in bread, pasta, crackers, chips, breadcrumbs, oyster sauce, soy sauce, doenjang, and ssamjang. Even oats, which are inherently gluten-free, but are often cross-contaminated, are not always gluten-free. 

There is also a misconception that sourdough bread is gluten-free. It is NOT, unless it’s made with gluten-free flour or grains. Several bottled sauces also contain gluten, such as sriracha and ponzu, unless specifically labeled gluten-free. 

Milk/Caesin

The inability to digest casein causes the allergy. This can result in bloating, skin rashes, and congestion. Milk is found in cheese, ice cream, cream, whipped cream, condensed milk, and evaporated milk. 

Some customers may be only sensitive to cow’s milk, so please learn where your cheeses come from, as sheep and goat’s cheese may be okay with those only allergic to cow’s milk. 

Egg

Eggs are found in breads, pastries, and fresh pasta. Eggs are also used in some dressings such as Caesar’s salad and in carbonara. 

Soy

This is in tofu, taho, tokwa. It’s possible to have gluten-free soy sauce made from soybeans, this just means they leave out the wheat in the fermentation. 

Sometimes, restaurants ask if I can have tofu and think that tofu is gluten. It is NOT. Soy SAUCE has gluten because of the added wheat in the fermentation process. 

Peanuts

Found in sauces, whole nuts, and peanut oil in oriental cooking. Do not overlook the peanut OIL as it’s enough to get someone sick. 

Crustacean shellfish

This includes shrimp, lobster, and crab. Found in bagoong, seafood broths, and several base broths in restaurants that use crustaceans as a base for broth. 

Latex fruit

Among latex fruits are avocado, banana, chestnut, kiwi, passion fruit, papaya, peaches, tomatoes, white potato, and bell pepper. These types of allergies are also scary as they result in anaphylaxis. 

The best restaurants in the world pride themselves on the traceability of where they source their food, even going as far as growing it themselves to ensure the quality. Here, there are restaurants who buy chips to crush on top of a dish from (in the words of the server) “’Yong regular lang na nabibili sa labas.” 

Rather than being the next new place to eat, having accountability and putting time into training the staff is what sets apart the restaurants that are Manila staples, and those that are a flash in the non-gluten-free pan. 

Sincerely,

Juana, on behalf of those with food allergies

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Here is my list of places that I have marked safe for gluten and where staff is knowledgeable and careful about what they serve.

1. Sala Bistro
2. People’s Palace
3. Sugi
4. Sala (main) 
5. Chungdam  (You can request for things not to have flour or soy sauce. Otherwise they will tell you what has soy sauce or flour, and the Korean chef is very accommodating )
6. Tang
7. Fukudaya 
8. La Chinesca (I was quite impressed with the staff here who asked me if I had full-on Celiac disease, and that if I did, that it might not be safe to eat, as there is possible cross-contamination.)
9. City Hotpot (When with friends, we get the four-soup pot and they use one to dip their gluten-containing food.)
10. A mano, Cibo, and Lusso (all have gluten-free pasta on hand)