Eating out by allergen and diet

Each guide here covers one allergen or diet end to end — where it hides, how it reaches a dish that does not contain it, what to ask the kitchen, and which dish patterns usually need a closer look.

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The 14 EU-declarable allergens

  • Eating out with a peanut allergy — Eating out with a peanut allergy comes down to three questions: what thickens the sauce, what oil the kitchen fries in, and whether desserts share equipment with nut work — peanut is a legume, not a tree nut, and it shows up far outside the nut aisle.
  • Eating out with a tree nut allergy — With a tree nut allergy the two things that decide a restaurant meal are the pastry section and the sauces — nuts are ground into dressings, pestos, curries and desserts where nothing visible remains, and bakery areas are the hardest place in a kitchen to keep separate.
  • Eating out with a milk allergy — Dairy-free eating out fails most often on the finishing touches: the butter a steak rests in, the milk powder in a bread roll, the cream that gets stirred into a 'tomato' sauce at the end — so ask about fats and finishes, not just the obvious cheese.
  • Eating out with an egg allergy — Egg is easy to see on a breakfast menu and almost invisible everywhere else — in the glaze on pastry, the emulsifier in mayonnaise and dressings, the binder in burgers and meatballs, and the wash on fresh pasta — so the question to ask is what holds the dish together.
  • Eating out with coeliac disease — For coeliac disease the deciding factor in a restaurant is almost never the recipe — it is the shared fryer, the shared pasta water, the shared toaster and the flour in the air, so ask how the dish is cooked rather than only what is in it.
  • Eating out with a soy allergy — Soy allergy is hard to manage in restaurants because soy is a background ingredient rather than a headline one — it is in the frying oil, the bread, the marinade and the vegetarian protein, so ask about the fat and the seasoning as well as the dish.
  • Eating out with a fish allergy — Fish allergy is less about avoiding fish on the menu and more about avoiding fish in the seasoning — anchovy, fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce turn up in dressings, curries and stews that are never described as seafood.
  • Eating out with a crustacean allergy — Crustacean allergy is one of the most common adult-onset food allergies and one of the easiest to trip over in shared kitchens: the shrimp itself is obvious, but shrimp paste in a curry base, shellfish stock in a risotto and a shared fryer are not.
  • Eating out with a mollusc allergy — Molluscs — mussels, clams, oysters, squid, octopus and snails — are a separate EU-declarable allergen from crustaceans, and the ones that catch people out are the invisible ones: oyster sauce in a stir-fry and clam or squid stock in a seafood base.
  • Eating out with a sesame allergy — Sesame is the allergen most often missed in restaurants because it works as a background flavour rather than a visible ingredient — in tahini-based dressings, in the oil used to finish a stir-fry, and in bread, dips and spice blends where nobody thinks to mention it.
  • Eating out with a celery allergy — Celery is declarable in the EU because celeriac and celery seed hide in almost every savoury base — stock, bouillon, spice mixes, mirepoix and curry powders — so a celery allergy is managed by asking about stock and seasoning rather than about visible vegetables.
  • Eating out with a mustard allergy — Mustard allergy is mostly a sauce and seasoning problem: a teaspoon of mustard is the standard emulsifier in vinaigrette and mayonnaise, and mustard seed is in curry powders, pickles, marinades and spice rubs where it is never named on the menu.
  • Eating out with a lupin allergy — Lupin is a legume flour that has quietly spread through gluten-free and high-protein baking, so a lupin allergy is easiest to manage by treating every bread, pastry and pasta as a question — especially the gluten-free ones.
  • Eating out with a sulphite sensitivity — Sulphites are a preservative rather than a food, so avoiding them in a restaurant means asking about wine, dried fruit, pre-cut potatoes, vinegar and processed meat — the places where a kitchen buys the ingredient already treated.

Common diets

  • Eating out on a vegan diet — Eating vegan in a restaurant is rarely about the headline dish and usually about four details: the stock, the fat the dish is cooked in, whether the pasta or bread contains egg or milk, and whether the dessert uses gelatine or honey.
  • Eating out on a halal diet — Eating halal outside a certified venue usually turns on three things: whether the meat is zabiha-certified, whether alcohol is used in cooking or in the sauce, and whether pork-derived gelatine or lard appears in desserts and pastry.
  • Eating out on a kosher diet — Keeping kosher in a non-certified restaurant is limited by design: the rules cover permitted species, slaughter, the separation of meat and dairy and the equipment used, so what the kitchen cooks in matters as much as what it cooks.
  • Eating out on a low-FODMAP diet — Low-FODMAP eating out is dominated by onion and garlic, which are in almost every savoury base in professional cooking — so the useful question is not 'is this low-FODMAP' but 'is there onion or garlic in the base, the stock or the seasoning'.
  • Eating out on a keto or low-carbohydrate diet — Eating keto in a restaurant is mostly an ordering skill rather than a menu-reading one: most kitchens will swap a starch for a vegetable, and the carbohydrates that break the day are usually in the sauce, the glaze and the drink rather than on the plate.

Advisory, not medical advice

MealSafe is a planning aid, not medical advice. AI-generated assessments can be incomplete or wrong, and ingredients and kitchen routines change without notice. Always confirm with the kitchen, the producer or the label before you eat, and follow the advice of your own clinician.