It looks good, it tastes like nothing one earth

[venta]

Here is a useful thing I just came across. At least, it is useful if you are planning to go to Japan and are not omnivorous:

Cut-out-and-keep cards explaining various dietary restrictions, in JapaneseI think these are a great idea, particularly for countries in which your average foreign person is all at sea with the language. It occurs to me that

Comments

[lanfykins]

Such a sensible concept.

In fact, there are times when such cards might come in handy in this country...

[phlebas]

I'm not sure there's enough repetition of 'no, really, none at all, I might die' on the allergy ones to work in this country.

[venta]

Or possibly any country :)

On the no-meat front, I've also heard tales from travelling vegans about (in some countries) having to specify that "no meat" also includes "no minced meat" as that's considered to be different. So I guess the signs need to be culturally-aware as well as translated. (Hence the inclusion on the no-fish Japanese one that yes, this means dashi as well.)

I think Travelling Vegans sounds a bit like some sort of frightfully left-wing bang-on circus.

[pseudomonas]

Useful; I think I've seen such things before though. I resorted to drawing pictures to explain in a restaurant in Armenia once.

[venta]

Yes, I don't think it's a new idea. Pictures probably work for most things if you have a waiter who is willing to pay attention... though drawing "I will have an anaphyllactic reaction to shellfish" might be messy and complicated :)

[sea_of_flame]

I have resorted to using the explanation 'shellfish that have/used to have legs and eyes are fine, those without are a problem', since bivalves have declared war on me

[venta]

Nice description!

It reminds me of a friend who often calls herself vegetarian (she isn't, it's just the simplest way to summarise and make sure she gets something she can eat). She actually eats quite a lot of meat (chicken, fish, shellfish, etc). The slightly longer version is that she doesn't eat mammals - but apparently this requires too much biology knowledge to be a useful thing to say :)

[ringbark]

A friend has the misfortune to have an intolerance to any and all egg products. She found out (the hard way) that many people think "intolerance" means "I can't have very much of it" and switched to saying "allergy" even though this is technically incorrect

[venta]

A friend of my mother's is violently allergic to - of all things - potato. (Given that she's of my mum's generation, I'm surprised she's survived, because I suspect she had the allergy before anaphyllaxis was a word anyone knew).

Given that restaurants often use potato starch as a cheap way of thickening sauces - but deny it because it's not the classical way to thicken some sauces - this one can be a minefield. Potato also seems such a hugely improbably thing to be allergic to that I suspect she might have difficulty convincing people.

[venta]

In fairness, I am half-remembering this from being told ages ago, so I may be getting it wrong! It may have been one particularly up-itself French restaurant that had that problem or something :)

(However, you have accidentally answered something I've been wondering about for ages, which is "is cornflour gluten-free". I thought it was, but only because I couldn't find anything saying it did have gluten in (as opposed to something definitely saying it didn't). It's nice to have someone informed make an authoritative statement on it :) )

[exspelunca]

Try being violently allergic to alcohol, which I was for 30 years. No-one believes you. "just a little one..." No, not even a sip. And the very real fear that some clown would spike your tonic with vodka.

[venta]

Er, no, thanks, I don't think I will try that :)

[fractalgeek]

The cards are pretty good, but it would be nice if they made the distinction between fish and veggie dashi.

I also used to find "I can't eat X" (even for religious reasons) seemed to work better than "I don't eat X"

[venta]

I don't know if you read the comments, but someone commented about the distinction between fish and veggie dashi. Maki's answer was:

The reasoning here is that most of the time, especially at restaurants, dashi is made with some kind of dried fish. That is the norm. If by chance the establishment you are at makes their dashi from vegetable ingredients only (which would be unusual) they should be able to tell you that once you've said you can't have dashi.

[fractalgeek]

Me!

[venta]

Um... yes!

I considered that, but ruled it out because that comment was signed 'Mike' and your name is 'Ian'.

I went and checked on your LJ profile that your name was 'Ian' and everything.

And came back to comment... and, er, well. Sometimes, for some reason, I glance at an icon or mis-read a name and have quite long conversations with someone on LJ until it turns out that actually they are someone quite different to who I thought.

Anyway, it turns out that you appear to be fractalgeek and not in fact ringbark. I don't know how that happened, because your names and icons are pretty different...