At La Sirena, the Pleasures and Pitfalls of a Big Restaurant

Ingredients can change daily depending on the menu. That would be ridiculous for them to try and list every ingredient. The onus is on the diner to ask for details on the few specific dishes they may be interested in. In return, the kitchen should then be able to come back to the diner with all the (accurate) detail the diner needs. The problem was in this instance that the staff didn't have all the details, or bother to get them. But you can't expect a restaurant to have all ingredients of all dishes at the ready, and in printed form, each day.

Yikes. You sound fun. Disclaimer: you might not like this comment.

Thank your sharing your anecdote. Neither of my children have food allergies, but my wife has (adult onset) Celiac. Does that mean something else for "our society?"
Regarding recollections of "when we were young," I remember being on a stateside post in the late 60s and noting that none of the soldiers I saw there who had returned from Vietnam tours were dead or seriously injured.

Actually, my aunt developed a severe sesame allergy in her 50's, so age really has nothing to do with it.

Also, just because you personally don't know anyone who died from an allergy doesn't mean that it didn't happen when we were kids. It did, and it does, and there's nothing wrong with having dinner while making sure nobody at the table dies in the middle of it.

It's a good question, and I too have questioned all the food allergies, and there seem to be more of them in nicer neighborhoods. I asked an allergist about it and he said the allergy situation is real. He said with more people and more kinds of food, allergies have proliferated. People are not making the stuff up. Ask an allergist if you know one.

Maybe, but it was a fantastic dish that I wouldn't hesitate to order again if I was there--and I do wish I was now.

I believe he meant dimensions - as in "size," indicating that the bar, like the two dining room, is very large. Not shape.

I think it is grapefruit segments!

There's definitely some vile hostility in comments along the lines of the one talking about "special snowflakes," but there also seems to be disingenuous naivety on the part of Mr. Wells. Breadsticks served in Italian restaurants often have sesame seeds in them. I find it very hard to believe a professional food writer hasn't encountered them before. If I had a kid with a sesame allergy and took him out to dinner at an Italian restaurant, I'd snap one in half or taste it myself before letting the kid eat them.

Passion for Peaches, you should not get credit for not killing someone who has an anaphylactic allergy.
I have an egg allergy in our household and the number of times that even when parameters are set they do their best to screw it up, for example an aioli dressing on the top of a burrito or mayonnaise container dropped into the middle of the basket of fries.

"A parent should have checked those breadsticks before the child consumed them."

Frankly, this is ridiculous. The parent told two servers that the child was allergic to sesame and the breadsticks were offered as an alternative - the servers should know what goes into those breadsticks AND NOT SERVED IT TO HIM.

"If a person is truly allergic to something as ubiquitous as sesame, it might be best to avoid all bread products when dining out, yes?"
There are PLENTY of bread products that don't contain sesame so, no. No, a person should not have to avoid ALL bread products because of a sesame allergy.

Not everyone with food allergies is as fussy as the woman you described. I know plenty of people that have them and have been nothing but courteous and clear when stating so at restaurants. Is it really too much to expect the server to remember??

An odd example, as La Sirena has fried rabbit on the menu. It pays to check!

Really? I guess that's why the European Food Information Council has a document entitled "Food allergy and food intolerance," that includes the statement that "The European Union is in the process of considering appropriate allergen labelling, ...." (http://www.eufic.org/article/en/expid/basics-food-allergy-intolerance/)

This one is surprisingly quiet. Have gone multiple times at 8:00pm and never found it to be anything but mild.

Sound Respectful to conversation.

Went there for a drink and walked out because it was SO loud.

That doesn't make sense to me either. Mediocre clam sauce and clots of servers standing around isn't my idea of a 2 star dinner.

I agree. The food sounds lackluster, for lack of a better way of putting it. The sesame allergy, and the way it was handled should have automatically resulted in a one star rating even if everything else was superb - whether or not Mr. Batali called to apologize.

A restaurant aspiring to this level-- or ANY restaurant, really-- should know what is I their food. Full stop. If you don't know, you shouldn't serve it to anyone.

Wait staff knows the ingredients of all dishes OR have the opportunity to obtain and share that info. After having told two servers for that table, one would hope the info would be passed among the relevant service team. Those of us with serious food intolerances must be over-vigilant since mistakes like this one happen too often for comfort.

Using the example here, it was a breadstick. A breadstick should contain wheat, yeast, water and salt. It might contain all other kinds of things, just like wonderbread contains nearly 40 ingredients.
The waitperson is the liason between the kitchen staff who really should know what is in the food, they are making it or they pulled it out of a box with the ingredients on it. If the wait person can't liase then the kitchen staff or some other suitably responsible person should come to the table to figure things out.
Seems there should be a follow up on eating with allergies here. The ordering process is either arduous or a breeze depending on how organized the restaurant is, not usually how organized the diner is.

This isn't a Wendy's being reviewed. This is a restaurant run by two of the top gents in the industry. Servers here are supposed to be well-trained & usually have years of experience. They are there to guide diners through the meal as well as the wine and cocktail list. If there are likes and dislikes, you tell the server and you don't get those things in your meal, end of story. Is that considered entitlement? No. Then why would it be different for a child -- a diner also -- with food allergies? If the restaurant doesn't know what's in their food, they shouldn't serve it. To ANYONE.

People who've never had to negotiate the everyday hell of trying -- and sometimes failing -- to protect a child with food allergies should spend a week with those of us who do. Shop with us for the "safe foods," read every label, every time (because food producers & ingredients change). Get on the email list for food recalls; our "safe" potato chips and pretzels were just recalled; where will our school-lunch size bags of those be going? Probably to the neighbor with no allergies. Last year we got lazy once-- once-- and let our kid buy an Italian ice from a park vendor. 10 minutes later she said her throat was closing. Gave her her epinephrine & rushed to the hospital. That mistake cost us $4500 in hospital bills and probably 2 years off each parent's life expectancies & eroded our kid's sense of safety. Are we entitled? Guess we are too busy reading labels and paying doctor bills to know.

Who should the parent or the person with allergies ask then? God? The busser? Take themselves off to the kitchen on a mission?

If you don't know what your cooking you should not serve it.

Whats in the bread, don't know we order it in.
Whats in the fish batter, don't know we order it in.
Whats in the ice cream, don't know we order it in.

You get to learn a lot about how a restaurant runs very quickly when you dine with people with allergies.

My favorite was a 'home made' ice cream place on Cape Cod. Home made meant they bought in flavor packs from Sysco and blended them. Nothing home made about what they did. Nothing all natural about the ingredients and colors in the flavor packs either.

"...somebody on his staff served breadsticks to my son, who, we’d explained to two of our servers, has a serious sesame allergy."

He was NOT stealing from empoyees' tips. He was doing what most continental restaurants do. Dividing them between the front and back of restaurant staff using a "tronc" system. Do you really think that the success of a restaurant is solely due to the waiters?

Ian, NYC restaurants aren't continental. And it's absurd to suggest, as you seem to be, that Batali and his partners have any excuses for being uninformed as to local regulations on dividing tips.

I am not sure what you mean by "continental restaurants"!!! In Italy waiters are paid a working wage and do not need to depend on tips in order to survive. Most people leave a small tip (1-2 euros per person), also done in coffee shops (less of a tip) and the amounts are shared at the end of the evening by waiters, cooks and cashiers. And from what I understand about the lawsuit, Batali and Bastianich were garnishing a part of tips to fill their own pockets. For shame.

did you say 40 meals at battali restaurants, and yet you don't think very highly of his work?

The setting is definitely deserving of two stars. The restaurant looks spectacular and is a very fun place to go out. The quality of the food is somewhat inconsistent but generally very high. The weak link is the service.

I felt the opposite about the setting. The patio is nice, but the main room felt like a hotel lobby (and an unimaginative one at that) to me

So how many times do you have to go out before you realize that underpaid staffers are not going to pick up on your son's needs, regardless if you tell them beforehand? You said you have had 5 experiences before. What made you expect something different? Mario is just a guy, and his staff are just people hired to serve bread, not nutritionists.

Absolutely they do their best, yet 5 times, at a minimum, the server got it wrong, often after asking the kitchen staff. My point is that Batali says he attends to the issue with a "specialist," I say lip service is dangerous. As when Mr. Wells's son was delivered a breadstick specifically to replace something he established was inedible. Would it be impossible for kitchens to have an accurate list of ingredients available for the unfortunately allergic customer? Maybe the specialist can work on that!

I can't eat almonds - which is a heavily used ingredient - and I mention it to servers - but I would never think to hold them responsible. There's just so many things going on in a restaurant that's it's highly likely someone is going to not keep it all straight in their mind. It's not malicious. Think about it like driving: drive defensively, eat defensively. The other day on Rte 78 the car veered into my lane as they clearly weren't looking, but I'm not going to stop right then and there and chastise them, I'm going to do an evasive maneuver to protect myself. As a person with an allergy you just have to assume everything is suspect and you need to inspect it each and every time. And if you choose to eat in restaurants this is YOUR responsibility not theirs.

I'm right there with you, I'm willing to pay a high price for really good food that I can't begin to make myself, I'm not willing to pay a high price for not great food.

How awful that an adult would lose their means of support because a parent insisted on taking their highly allergic child to a restaurant.

Am I suggesting that people with severe food allergies don't eat out? YES.
And if they do, at least don't blame the restaurant if they have a reaction.

Even if a food with the increasingly-long list of offenders isn't served, there is always the possibility of cross-contamination. The responsibility is not the restaurant's.

It's not other people's fault I have some bizarre allergy to cats. I can sit next to a complete stranger (doctor, theater, standing in line at the store) and go into a full-blown asthma attack because, it turns out, they have a pet cat.
That's my problem and I deal with it.

Had the worst service experience of my life at Eataly. Server spilled wine all over me (it happens), but the managers were completely unsympathetic and claimed they were hamstrung by strict "corporate" policies that gave them no flexibility to comp dishes, comp the spilled wine, or in any way rectify a miserable situation aside from the standard dry cleaning reimbursement.

Batali's demeanor is one of a big-shot, very important and famous chef, with very little warmth and too much hustle. Seems to lend itself to that sort of brusque treatment.