Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

I wanted to share an experience with you. Effectively a situation where I doubted some allergen information I was given but let Piglet eat the food anyway. In short, I got pretty much every bit wrong: I didn’t push for complete clarity on the ingredients, I let my son eat something against my better judgement and, it turns out, I was wrong to doubt the waiter in the first place…

This experience happened recently. We were staying in a hotel for a very good friend’s wedding. He had been fantastic about pre-checking the wedding meal with me and the hotel had handled our allergies (along with other dietary requirements on our table) brilliantly. We were having breakfast in the hotel the next morning and we all went for cooked options. Within reason, cooked breakfasts are one of the easier meals to order and I was fairly confident they understood our allergen requirements from the evening meal the night before. Everyone was fairly hungry; being the kind of morning where you have to make yourself presentable in your hotel room before coming down to eat (rather than all rolling downstairs in a state of half undress, more interested in holding a Postman Pat story than wearing your slippers, and definitely before brushing your hair). Prior to our breakfasts arriving they brought out a rack of toast, alternating white farmhouse and granary. Thinking it unlikely, I ask whether this would be soya/dairy-free and I’m told instantly, ‘yes’. Knowing that most commercial sliced bread has soya flour, I thought it was worth double checking…

Double checking is hard. It’s effectively telling the person that you don’t believe them or think them incompetent. It’s so often not the case, most of the time it’s just a misunderstanding, a false assumption, an oversight. If it wasn’t for the case that so many of my ‘double-checks’ unearth important allergy information, I’d probably lose the confidence to keep checking…

I think the waiter was slightly surprised to have me doubt that the bread didn’t have soya. He wasn’t at all impolite but firm in his response that it was just normal flour. With my son now already holding a piece of the toast and me trying to hold off him eating it – I gave in and decided to take this at face value despite my suspicion. Shortly afterwards, I started to fear that ‘normal flour’ meant that it was just made with wheat flour rather than some other unusual flour (who would make bread from soya flour, right?!? Oh…) but not a confirmation that soya flour was not an ingredient for whitening/preserving as it so often is. It wasn’t really until Piglet had finished his first slice that it dawned on me quite how unlikely this right-angled triangle of sliced, toasted bread was to be some artisan non-added to loaf of bread…

I realise I really should have pressed the matter (asking the waiter to double check packaging, or just stopping Rilke from eating any by distracting him until the rest of the food arrived) but I was so keen to believe that the bread would be soya free that I just turned a blind eye. Annoyed with myself for not pressing the matter and surprised that Piglet didn’t seem to have a clear reaction, I contacted the hotel to ask them to confirm (too late, I know). I wasn’t entirely sure what I expected to hear. I wish it wasn’t the case but I can see why they’d be reluctant to put in writing that they did feed us the allergen, as polite as I tried to make the email. Despite this, I got an email back the next day confirming that all their bread comes from a local bakery and that the only allergens were gluten (as you’d expect).

Instantly I felt bad for doubting them. On reflection, they actually handled both the wedding breakfast and the breakfast brilliantly. Effectively just because they don’t make a song and dance about their catering for allergens I took their quick response to an allergy question as arrogance rather than actually being informed. Completely my bad. I asked the manager of the hotel whether he would mind me naming their hotel and using my mistake in this blog: they were very happy to have this included and I even know that the manager took the time to read a few pieces in research before getting back to me. So if you want a trip to a hotel and spa, a lovely meal near Stow in the Wold or even looking to organise a wedding I can fully recommend Wyck Hill House Hotel. Please give them a look.

It’s an interesting question – should companies make a ‘big deal’ of their confidence in their ability to cater for allergies? Ideally not, I guess. It would just be something that was part of the regulations of any business (like paying their tax, or auto-enrolling their employees for pensions). But at the moment, such are the current levels of communication around allergy information, that it would be a selling point to me that they do. I suspect this will change over the next 10 years or so. Just look at the arc of ‘gluten-free’ options in shops in the last decade. I fear soya-free is still some way off that level of profile. (Although I know my friend The Happy Coeliac would argue that management of cross contamination is still someway off what it should be! Shared tongs anyone?!)

I’m not 100% sure what I’d do differently next time. I guess just be bolder to discuss it further with the waiter. Unless of course there’s something on offer that’s better than sliced bread.