Zizzi and the entire dairy-free menu

Sunday was a trip into the big smoke to see some university friends we hadn’t seen for far too long. To be fair, most people fall into the category of ‘haven’t seen them for too long’; I think it’s just a bi-product of being two working parents of a two-year old child. Well, that and my chronic lack of organisational skills… Both sets of friends have their own little people: one who was only about 1 year old when we last saw her and the other who is only 10-weeks-new to the world! It was lovely to catch up with them, even if much of my time was spent trying to persuade Piglet to come back from the incredibly exciting disabled access ramp and not to run off into the exhibits of the V&A Childhood Museum. Holding a 10-week old baby was a shock. I nearly threw her up to the ceiling on first taking her such was my shock at the weight difference between her and Piglet. It was very funny seeing my wife holding a little baby as well, it makes you realise quite how big Piglet has become. I do wonder whether even our neighbours are pulling off their own ears at the number of times my wife and I have said to each other “he’s really not a baby any more”. 12,648 times, if you were wondering…

Such was the fun of a day out in London (and Piglet’s excitement at going on the big trains and little trains i.e. underground) that we were only just leaving East London at dinner time. We decided to stop in at Zizzi at the back of Paddington station; in the reasonably recently redeveloped Paddington Basin where there’s a splattering of new restaurants, cafes and bars. It’s a place I used to know from the days when I used to work in our London offices while still being based down in Somerset before I moved permanently to the London office in 2012. Interestingly, it was straight after the London Olympics that we moved and much of the afternoon was spent in the Olympic park after our visit to the V&A. Not that I saw much of the Olympics being in Bali on honeymoon for the duration of it. Oh well…

Zizzi’s is always a great unplanned stop for food. They have a specific dairy-free menu inside their allergen menu, their pizza base doesn’t contain soya (at the time of writing, obviously always check for yourselves) and they can do vegan cheese substitutions. I usually have to be careful not to overdose on bread because the temptation is to have dairy-free garlic bread to start, a pizza for main and a dairy-free dessert calzone for pudding #doughinduceddoze. As we were eating fairly early in the evening – the restaurant had quite a few free tables and we sidled into a booth by the windows. However, after looking at the menus for a while (allergen menus always take some time to acclimatize to, let alone order from) and letting Piglet colour in the kids menu, we realised that he was going to struggle to reach the table with the fixed seating and asked to move to a nearby table instead.

After the customary ‘we’ll just need a few minutes longer’ we chose our favourites and ordered. For my wife, the vegan ragu; for Piglet the penne pasta with bolognaise and for me the vegan pizza with additional extra of roast chicken. We showed restraint on the garlic bread and settled on just spicy nuts as a starter. Piglet on the other hand got the nuts, some cucumber, some carrot sticks and also a great spiral of garlic bread dough to compensate.

This is where it starts to get a bit weird… I’m a big fan of Zizzi and they were taking their allergy management very seriously, which is obviously to be applauded, but there were a couple of funnies with this particular experience. Shortly after ordering with the waitress, the manager came over to us to discuss the order. She had already ascertained that we were dairy and soya free. (I don’t bother explaining that technically it’s only my wife and Piglet that needs to avoid soya. It over complicates things and means we can all share anyway, so I only tend to eat soya when I’m on my own). On the child’s bolognaise, she expresses concern that this might not be suitable. We both re-check it in the allergen menu and it is clearly listed as safe for soya and milk but, knowing that it’s different from the adult bolognaise they serve, she maintains that we would be better to change to vegan ragu. This confuses me a bit but I don’t want to take any risks and agree. This all happens while my wife and Piglet are away at the toilets and so I explain (or try) the change in order on their return. My wife points out that Piglet hasn’t been hugely keen on the vegan ragu before and so we then try and change it to just the pomodoro sauce. Strangely there still seems to be some reluctance (possibly a. they think the vegan ragu is a more direct substitution or b. they’ve started preparing the ragu). In the end they actually offer to bring us both sauces so we can see which he wants.

I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I am delighted that a restaurant is taking such an active presence in helping manage the consumption of allergens. The manager clearly wanted to make sure that what we ate was safe and that has to be no1 priority. However on the other hand, by distrusting the allergen menu, it throws into question the safety of any of our choices. We’ve eaten at Zizzi enough times to know that this is not really the case and they are very good at correctly reporting and highlighting the possible options, but if I hadn’t have known this – I might be reluctant to stick to any of our original orders… Having thought about this more since the event, I wonder if we’ve worked out what was actually going on… If I remember correctly, the bolognaise didn’t used to be dairy-free and we always used to have the pomodoro sauce (which Piglet adores – he’ll eat passata with a spoon if he’s allowed – he’s not!). At some point in the last year or so – this seems to have been changed to be suitable. It’s possible that it’s so infrequent an issue that comes up that the last time they were asked to check the bolognaise it did contain milk and that was in the managers mind. She finds herself in a position where she thinks the allergen menu is wrong but doesn’t want to overly concern us. I don’t know – it’s just a theory.

Fairly quickly our food arrives (although not before an erroneous plate of crudités and humous arrives on our table before the manager sees it, apologises and takes it away. As expected, Piglet is reluctant to eat the ragu (it’s delicious, he just isn’t keen) and wolfs down the pomodoro sauce, the pasta, the cucumber, the nuts and much of the carrot. I completely understand how it happens but this is the next oddity. My pizza is quite spicy and delicious but comes with a special sticker saying dairy-free (great!) and vegan (???). My original pizza comes from the vegan menu, and they’re labelling is great for avoiding confusion, but as soon as you ask to add chicken someone should really realise that that sticker is not correct. (It’s not like it’s one of those tricky meats that has a different name for the food to the animal i.e. pork or beef – the clue is literally in the name!). I’m not too bothered by this but my vegan friend is quite angry about it when I tell him.

We, again, show restraint on the puddings. It’s very unusual that restaurants offer puddings that are both dairy and soya free but for some reason I’m always too full by the time it gets to ordering them to treat myself. Piglet gets the fruit that comes with his kid’s set menu but we go for just mint tea and coffee (one each – not together, obviously…). In hindsight, this being my 4th coffee of the day and it being fairly late in the day might have explained why I struggled to sleep later that night. Ironically, the reason I’d had so much coffee in the first place was that I was exhausted from the previous night where Piglet had not slept particularly well… (And so the cycle continues… Oh the irony!)

All in all, the food was tasty and we will definitely go back to Zizzi’s again. But this was one of the more interesting experiences from an allergen management point of view.