Blog

How to tell a restaurant about your food allergy

Published 21 October 2026

When we eat out with a food allergy, the useful part is not a long speech. It is a short, specific conversation, had early enough that the kitchen can still change what it is doing. In the UK, food businesses have to tell you if any of the 14 regulated allergens is an ingredient in the food they sell. The Food Standards Agency explains that duty for people eating in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Food Standards Scotland sets out the same kind of conversation for eating out north of the border. This page is how we use that advice. It is not a script that replaces your own allergy plan, and it is not medical advice.

Say the food by name

We name the food. “No nuts” is a vague sentence in a UK kitchen, because peanut and the tree nuts are separate allergens, and mustard, sesame, milk and egg are not nuts at all. If you avoid peanut and mustard, say both. If you avoid milk, say milk, not only “dairy-free”, and say whether you mean a milk allergy. The person taking the order may not be the person who cooked the sauce, so the words have to be ones they can repeat without translating them into a guess.

The Food Standards Agency asks you to be clear, and to give examples of the foods that cause a reaction. Examples help when a menu uses a different word from the one on your clinic letter. Groundnut means peanut. Soya sauce is a soya question. A gluten-free line on a menu is not an answer about mustard. Our guides to peanut, mustard, gluten and coeliac disease, milk and sesame are there for the foods that get shortened in conversation. The full list of 14 is the set a business has to be able to tell you about. If your allergy is to something outside that list, the Food Standards Agency says to ask about that food anyway. The law’s list is not the limit of what you are allowed to mention.

Phone before you go

Check the menu if it is online, then phone. The Food Standards Agency’s advice on ordering is to ask what the business’s approach is before you rely on a table. The questions it suggests are practical, and we use them almost word for word.

• Do you offer meals that are suitable for this allergy?
• If not, are staff able to make a dish that avoids these foods?
• How is the food handled? Could equipment or ingredients cause cross-contamination?
• Has the recipe changed, or has an ingredient been swapped?

A business must give you allergen information. It does not have to cook you a different meal. That is worth knowing before you have crossed a city. If the person on the phone sounds unsure, ask for a manager or for someone who can check the ingredients. Food businesses have to train their staff on allergens. Asking for the person who actually knows is you using that system, not you being difficult.

A written list helps when the room is noisy or the booking is for several people. Searching SafePlate is free. You can search on the SafePlate homepage once the foods are on your profile, and you can search for restaurants for a food allergy before you choose a neighbourhood. The usable allergy chef card, in 38 languages, is part of SafePlate Plus. The allergy chef card page on the free site is a preview, so you can see the layout. It is not a card filled in with your foods, and it is not something you can hand over as yours.

Say it again when you arrive

We say it again at the table, even if we phoned. The person on the lunch shift may not be the person who took the booking. The Food Standards Agency’s advice for when you arrive is to speak to the server or the manager, repeat the earlier conversation, and check that the dish is still suitable. Remind them about glazes, garnishes, sauces and cooking oils, and about handling the meal with care. Food Standards Scotland makes the same point, and it adds a line we take seriously: if you are in any doubt that staff understand, do not eat there.

For a plate cooked to order, allergen information can be written down or spoken. If it is spoken, the business has to signpost how you get it. We look for that notice, and we still ask out loud. A line that says “please speak to a member of staff about allergens” is the start of the conversation. It is not, by itself, the answer about the dish. If the spoken answer is “it should be fine”, we ask them to check the recipe and tell us what the kitchen said. A guess is not the information the rules are describing.

We also ask again on a second visit, even when the last one went well. Recipes change. A garnish that was not there in March can be there in October. “The usual” is not an allergen check. The Food Standards Agency tells you to ask whether anything has been substituted. We would rather hear “let me go and look” than a confident answer from memory.

May contain, buffets and takeaway boxes

“May contain” and “not suitable for” are precautionary labels. The Food Standards Agency says there is no specific legal requirement for a business to print them. They warn that an allergen might be present because of cross-contamination. Their absence is not a promise that a fryer, a board or a sauce bottle was kept for your meal. Ask about the equipment as well as the recipe.

Complicated dishes are where allergens hide, which is why both the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland tell you to be extra careful with them. A buffet adds another problem: spoons travel. We ask what each dish contains and whether the serving spoons are shared. If nobody can say, we do not fill a plate and hope. The same goes for a sauce poured at the table after you have already said yes to the main item.

Ordering a takeaway counts as distance selling. Allergen information has to be available before you finish buying, in writing or on the phone, and again when the food arrives. If several people are eating, ask for each container to be labelled so you can see which one was made for the allergy. We do not pass boxes around and guess from the smell. A boxed sandwich that was packed before you chose it is a different rule again. That is Natasha’s Law and PPDS labelling. A hot plate and a packed sandwich need two kinds of answer, not one.

A short order we actually use

1. Name the foods, and say that it is an allergy.
2. Ask the kitchen to check the sauce, the oil, the garnish and anything swapped in today.
3. Ask them to tell you what the kitchen said, not what the menu title suggests.
4. If they cannot check, choose another dish or leave.

The city changes the journey, not the questions. In London the council team depends on the borough. In Manchester the city boundary matters if you are reporting a problem later. In Edinburgh a Pass sticker is a hygiene mark, not an allergen answer. In Cardiff the hygiene rating has to be displayed, and it is still a different question from the plate. Those guides explain the local picture. They do not clear a kitchen.

If the information was refused, missing or wrong, there is a separate step for how to report a restaurant to the local food safety team. If someone at the table is having a reaction, stop the conversation about the menu and follow what to do in an allergic reaction: call 999, and use an adrenaline auto-injector if they have one. That page follows the NHS. This one is only about the conversation before the food arrives.

Set up your foods before you search. This is not medical advice. Confirm the meal with the kitchen. In the UK, if you think someone is having anaphylaxis, call 999.