How to Eat Out With Food Allergies 101

As mentioned in my previous post, I needed some relaxing this weekend. I did in fact ditch the opera, and it was well worth it. To make up for it, I actually practiced my music today and spent the entire car ride up listening to the Natalie Cole CD for voice teacher gave me for Christmas even though I'm not the hugest fan of the sound of her voice (she sounds whiny to my ears). Sad but true, I am actually addicted to the CD now and frequently go around humming the songs. Anyway, I ditched the opera and my husband and I went out for a lovely dinner at the Rosemont location McCormick and Schmick's.

Now here is where I need to write a glowing review for McCormick and Schmick's. We booked our reservation using OpenTable.com and in the "special requests" section of the reservation we wrote "food allergies." I had my husband do the booking so rather than have him try to remember to type in all of my allergies we left it non-specific. The moment we announced our arrival for our reservation they greeted us and acknowledged my food allergies right off the bat. How cool! They told me to give the list to our waiter and I would be accommodated no problem. Our waitress was absolutely fabulous about it the whole time and even had me write everything down so she could hand it to the chef. Throughout the meal she popped in to check on me multiple times, and was wonderful about replacing the main entree they brought out that had snow peas in it. But I get ahead of myself, let me share what I ate!

After identifying my food allergies and triple checking everything was okay for me (mostly on the waitresses part, she really was a saint) my husband insisted on having the flash-fried calamari with a trio of dipping sauces appetizer. I personally would have preferred no appetizer, but he seems to think he can eat enough food for 3 people when he eats out and I kept my mouth shut and allowed him to order it. I avoided the mayonnaise dipping sauce for fear of raw egg and stuck with the other two: a classic cocktail sauce and an orange marmalade and horseradish sauce. The calamari was cooked perfectly and melted in my mouth and was wonderful with both sauces. My only complaint was that I pulled out what felt and tasted like two pieces of shrimp shell from my calamari while eating it. Over the past few years I have not had a great history with shrimp shells (hives in my throat) so I got a bit nervous, but was fine. For a second I thought I felt swelling, but it quickly went away with some water and stopping eating the calamari. For my salad I got a spinach salad with fennel and cranberries with basil Dijon dressing. I quite enjoyed the flavors of it! The salad was supposed to have pine nuts which would have paired lovely with everything, but I had them leave them off, of course. My main entree was what the waitress recommended when I told her what dishes I was debating on. It was Seabass with a miso broth on top of udon noodles. Turns out the vegetables it comes with are pre-mixed and include snow peas- an old favorite of mine, but still a pea nonetheless so I had to send it back. Within 5 minutes I had a fresh plate sans any veggies. Oh boy was the miso broth flavorful! It tasted like the broth was more than just miso and water, but also some ginger, shittake mushrooms, garlic, and green onions, and perhaps a little bit of sugar or something else sweet. I'm not 100% on what all gave the miso broth it's flavoring but it was divine and allergen free! The seabass was cooked well, though I was nervous for a minute it was undercooked... luckily it was not! Because we were having a fun evening out we had to do dessert as well, and my aforementioned husband who thinks he's eating for three wanted his own dessert and would not share (he even ordered one with nuts). So I ordered the chocolate bag with white chocolate mousse and berries. The chocolate bag was literally that, and bag made our of chocolate filled with the mousse and berries. It was so large I could barely eat half of it. I ate all the berries and some of the chocolate and mousse.

Being the wine-o that I am, we had a wonderful bottle of wine with dinner called Campogrande Orvieto Classico from Italy. It was quite fruity, but mild and only slightly on the dry side. It went well with the whole meal. The waitress recommended that one, and we loved it! I almost ordered a second bottle but my hubby said no. Instead I got a port to go with my dessert, which was also good though not as sweet as I am use to, which was refreshing.

I have to give serious recognition to McCormick and Schmick's for how attentive they were to my food allergies, especially given how strange they are. As the waitress pointed out to me, seafood restaurants have to deal with food allergies all the time because of shellfish so in a way it is really just part of their everyday operations. Needless to say, I was thrilled with both my dinner and the experience and can't wait to have a fun weekend in Chicagoland again so I can eat there more often!