So I went out to dinner...

...and it was pretty epic.

First off, I obviously don't go out to eat very frequently. It's simply too difficult from start to finish--picking the right company, figuring out what allergies I can legitimately claim to quiz the waiter/waitress on, the menu itself, and then of course, what if something goes wrong and i'm out on the town, trying to enjoy myself? I will say, since this is an FAQ, if pressed, I'll go with Mexican because a cheese quesadilla is pretty safe, or Italian because I can usually get a spaghetti/marinara dish without too much trouble.

Onwards...to set the scene. My friends, who are fully aware of the full list of allergens and do their absolute best to accommodate at all times, and I were in Pittsburgh for a concert. In the district, there are a ton of restaurants. I perused menus beforehand and was totally overwhelmed so we ended up conferring over a few menus before we even went (That's the other thing. I will ALWAYS peruse the menu before I go to a restaurant). Adam had picked one restaurant in particular that he thought would be a good one--called Meat and Potatoes. We joked about how the 'meat' wouldn't work for me but maybe the 'potato' part would. So I got online and checked out their menu. I scanned it, then went down and read it very closely. And then I called my mom. She did the same thing. The conclusion? Nothing, absolutely NOTHING was possible. I was in a good mood that night, so that was pretty funny. That has never happened before and I'm not knocking the restaurant at all, but it's pretty intriguing how that happened. Basically it's cause they added meat to just about every dish, but still.

See how this is shaping up to be pretty epic even before we got to Pittsburgh?

We did okay with the menu on the next restaurant. I'm not going to name this one because I'm going to make snarky comments and it's probably not truly reflective so I'll let them languish in anonymity for now. So Adam sent me the name of choice number two and I look at it. It's limited, but there's a few options we can work with. So we head over to Pittsburgh and begin our evening.

My options quickly dwindled. I had the foresight to ask about the tempura for the tempura shrimp. I do truly love to eat good seafood and this was a classy enough place to have good seafood (the further you get from the coast, the more I doubt the quality of the seafood--I'm a snob about my seafood, but I can be--I grew up near the coast). I mentioned the egg allergy and the waitress asked about other allergies.

"Anything else? Dairy allergy?"
"No, no other allergies."

Let's reference back to the fact that I am allergic to SEVENTEEN things. 17! (In all actuality, it's probably more like 18--I've added two potentials and subtracted one that doesn't seem to do anything, but anyway!)

NB: I've never counted my allergens before. that's a little eye opening statistic there.

I must have been in a good mood looking forward to this concert because I just kinda laughed all that off with an eye roll. It's a blatant lie, but should I confront anyone with my list of allergens? Considering the bafflement I got from a nutritionist once...i'm thinking it's not the best course of action. Plus we'll always go back to the fact that I don't get anaphylactic so I don't want anyone totally freaking over the list.

So anyway, the tempura had egg in it. We had another waiter by this point, and he confirmed that with the chef. So that eliminated a number of my options, so I just went to my old standby, the salad.

You know how the waiter always swings by and checks if everyone's ready to order? In recent months, everyone always eyes me when this statement is made. I am the deciding factor (I also always get to choose restaurants). So I say yes and I ordered my salad. Without the dijon vinaigrette because it simply didn't sound safe. And hey, I don't like mustard and I feel entitled to not like foods even when you eliminate all 17 things I can't eat (but I have tried things I have previously dismissed in order to have, you know, options for food). I ask if there's another vinaigrette I can substitute. Short answer, there's not. So I got oil and vinegar instead (and btw, it's not like vinegar is completely safe--rice vinegar? Apple cider vinegar? It ended up being balsamic, hooray!). I forgot to make sure they took off the bleu cheese, but I ended up managing.

The real gem of the evening came next.

"And what would you like for dinner?"

I can't imagine the look on my face, but what kind of a world doesn't consider a salad a dinner? I get that there's a side salad and it's usually part of the pre-entree fare, but seriously, dude? And he didn't even pick up on my snark: "Well, I was going to order the shrimp..."

So Adam and Amy order and the waiter scurries away to do what waiters do. We have entertaining conversation--partially surrounding food. They're getting married and we talked about reception food, which is interesting to consider (see previous blog posts!). I brought up the consideration of what to serve at my wedding and this proceeded to have Adam declaring there we should establish a restaurant named "Pam's" and all they serve is food I can eat. An interesting proposition, but you wouldn't notice it at one meal or even two; it's living the life that makes the point of what I can and can't eat.

Dinner proceeds and we get to the offering of the dessert menu, complete with the original waitress and her commentary on it. She also misses on the snark when we pass on dinner with the comment that everything has eggs in it.

We headed onwards to our concert, which was fabulous, and I will admit to only being plagued with mild abdominal cramps throughout the first song or two. So I'll knock that up to a success, though calling a salad a success is pretty blase.

I am still entertained by this experience, but I'll let y'all know it's not always this entertaining. The company and overall experience made it worthwhile. I recently went to lunch with my mom to try a new organic cafe in town and also ordered a salad; that lunch was much less memorable because of the uncontrolled children and the soccer moms. Although it can be entertaining, because my mom does have anaphylactic food allergies.

Never a boring day and never a morsel of food passes through my lips without consideration. I have "good food days" and "bad food days." But can you see why I may decline to go out to dinner and instead invite you over?