Our flight landed earlier than expected and we were able to get a last minute unplanned walk-in seating at this restaurant for lunch. My initial impression of this place was very good. I spoke with the host about whether they could accommodate my daughter’s egg and dairy allergy and they showed me an allergy menu that had several options for those restrictions. The seater who walked us to our seat even asked if the restaurant crayons and cutlery were safe for my daughter to use. However, on the walk to the table she commented on how sad it is for kids to have allergies and how much they miss out on. While I know she was trying to be kind it was a very negative way to start our trip as one of the reasons we love Disney, is because we don’t feel we miss out on anything.
The waiter and seater were more than happy to get the chef for us to speak to. The chef came out and we discussed how he could safely prepare the kids shrimp skewer meal and substitute fries for the rice. We agreed on a safe dessert option of Tofutti Ice-cream, Enjoy Life Cookies and Hershey’s Syrup. He said he would check the ingredients on the sprinkles to see if they were safe for her. He explained that they had a dedicated fryer to make the fries and the food would be safely prepared on a separate grill. At that point I was confident that she would be taken care of. That’s when things went unfortunately very wrong.
A busser brought my daughter her meal to the table stacked underneath her sisters open cheese burger, this unfortunately transferred cheese residue all over the bottom of the plate. There was no allergy stick on the food. We waited to speak with the waiter who told us that they remove the allergy sticks before the food is served? Before we could even address the cross contamination issue we noticed that the order was incorrect…she had been sent brown rice instead of fries. The plate was sent back to the kitchen and I was told a new one would be prepared. Minutes later the skewer of shrimp returned with extra shrimp added to it and a pile of green beans and we were told we would have to wait for fries to be prepared. Concerned about the food, we inspected it closely and found penne noodles covered in an oily residue buried within the green beans. We decided to allow her to eat the shrimp only, which unfortunately by this time were cold and terribly over salted, and waited for the fries which were brought out 10 minutes later. I probably should have complained more but we were so tired and hungry we figured she could at least eat the dessert the chef had promised.
Once again when dessert arrived it was not what was ordered. She was sent a bowl of Tofutti on a plate with Hershey’s M&M’s, Sprinkles and Syrup. I immediately noticed the M&M’s and pushed the dessert away. At this point the waiter, began adamantly stating that M&M’s were safe for dairy allergies. I literally had to google an ingredient list to show him that they contained milk and were not safe. He took them back to the kitchen and then came back and apologized, bringing me a bottle of brand new unopened Hershey’s syrup. The cookies never arrived. I asked to speak with the chef but was told he was too busy with the rush to speak to me about what happened. Instead the waiter offered free light out Tinkerbells and was very apologetic.
We were very happy to have avoided what could have been a very serious reaction. However, the series of events that occurred during this meal service showed me that there were multiple places were further allergy training was required with the staff on duty at the time. We were very glad that this was our only disappointing experience of the entire trip.
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