The Birthday Dinner That Wasn't

Yes, today is my birthday.  I'm old now so there's no excitement involved (only a little realization that the years keep flying by).

Friday afternoon, Older Boy came home from school complaining that he had a head ache.  He laid on the couch and I knew he was really under the weather because he missed basketball practice.  Sometime around 1 am he woke me up because he was getting sick.  Although he seemed better on Saturday, we made him stay on the couch all day, eat lightly, and we cancelled our sitter for that evening.  Hubs and I were going to go out to dinner.  It was a coincidence that we scheduled a sitter so close to my birthday.

Sunday was church and Older Boys first basketball game of the season.  He seemed to be feeling better, so we let him play in the game and we decided to try for another dinner out.  Because of the Little Man's allergies, we are limited as to where we can go.  We usually end up at Outback Steakhouse because we have always had good experiences there with them accommodating his food allergies.  But we've eaten at P.F. Chang's before and although his choices are limited, the Little Man wanted to go back.  P.F. Chang's has a gluten free menu which works for his wheat, rye, barley, and oat allergies.  But he's also allergic to eggs, peanuts and tree nuts so they also offer a "menu matrix" where they use the gluten free menu, add in the eggs, peanuts and tree nuts and they print out what is safe for him to eat.  Previously he's been able to have the chicken lettuce wraps or the steamed salmon with ginger (he normally likes salmon but he doesn't like the ginger on this version).  We pretty much figured he'd get the lettuce wraps again.  But when we got there, we were unpleasantly surprised.  As soon as the waiter came over, I explained the allergies, gave him the food allergy chef cards, asked for a manager.

I knew we were in trouble when no manager came over.  The waiter took the cards and went off to where the manager printed off the allergy menu matrix but the manager never came to the table (last time we were there the manager handled the food allergy order and facilitated the whole process).  The waiter returned to the table with our drinks and the allergy menu and apologized because there wasn't much on it for the Little Man to choose.  As I looked at the menu, I realized there was NOTHING for him to choose from.  The only things he could order were steamed rice, brown rice and some random sauces.  For some reason the lettuce wraps and the salmon were no longer on there. I really wish the manager would have come over like last time.  If this were the case, we wouldn't have even ordered drinks.  The waiter kept apologizing and saying "I'm sure the lettuce wraps are safe.  I don't believe there are any egg or nuts in them".  Really??  Then why aren't they showing up on the matrix and what changed since the last time we were here?  He couldn't answer any of those questions so we decided to leave.  We don't fool around with "I think" and "I'm sure".  The matrix said nothing was safe and rice doesn't make a dinner.

The Little Man got teary which of course caught the attention of the people next to us.  So they in turn had to inquire from the waiter what we needed (like it was any of there business...).  I took the Little Man to the car while Hubs paid $10.78 for 4 soft drinks.

I'm not upset with P.F. Chang's.  Things change and we'd much rather be safe than sorry.  I am however a bit upset with the staff at this "Chang's".  It just wasn't handled properly.  The manager went to every table around us asking how things were going, but he avoided us like the plague.  I wish we could have gotten the allergy matrix even before we were seated.

So a second night of dining out was thwarted too.  But we used it as a teaching experience for the Little Man.  The Little Man said he would have tried the lettuce wraps any way since he had them before.  So we explained to him that clearly something had changed since last time and they just weren't safe any more.  Either an ingredient changed, a supplier changed or cross contamination in the kitchen changed.  No one's life is worth some lettuce wraps.  For us, especially not our son's life.

(For the record, the chicken lettuce wraps are still on the gluten free menu at P.F. Chang's.  It's either the egg, the peanut or the tree nuts that made it unsafe.  Unfortunately they couldn't tell me which ingredient it was, so I can't share that information with you).