Cruising Gluten and Dairy Free with Princess Cruise Line

For those of you who noticed a lull in posting here, I was away the week after Thanksgiving on a cruise on Princess Cruise Line. (I was then stuck commuting into NYC for a training class for a week - my was it wonderful to go from 80 degrees in San Juan to 18 degrees in Manhattan!)

Anyhow, before booking the cruise I poked around online and found that Princess seemed to be one of the better lines for those following a GF diet. Overall it was a pretty positive experience with just a few caveats.

In the main dining room, any time you mention a food allergy to a waiter, he immediately summons the head waiter who then takes your order. I had selected any time dining which meant that at each dinner I had a new waiter, but always the same head waiter. The head waiter also brings the following night's menu and recommends the dishes that could be modified to accommodate your food issues (in my case, mostly gluten and dairy).

The down side to this approach is that the waiter (the person who picks up the order in the kitchen and delivers it) is sort of out of the loop. My second time eating in the dining room, I had veal cutlets (without the Marsala sauce) that had been dredged in flour. It was hard to be sure there was flour on it, until I took the first bite. Thinking it possible they had a GF flour (such as brown rice flour) on board, I decided to double check. Nope, turns out the chef had removed the sauce but not the dredging. They replaced the dinner and the head waiter became even more attentive to details afterwards. Mistakes do happen, but I think had the waiter been involved in the ordering, he may have caught the mistake before it was brought out.

At my third dinner in the dining room, I had GF spaghetti in garlic and olive oil as an appetizer. The waiter brought the plate out followed by a second waiter with a bowl of Parmesan - the head waiter intercepted him and waived him off. Again, their hearts are in the right place but in having the head waiter as the only point of contact, the other staff isn't as informed as they could be.

On one of the days we weren't getting into port until late, I decided to try the dining room for breakfast. Since they had GF pasta at dinner I figured I'd ask the breakfast head waiter what my options were. Other than bacon and eggs (I can't really eat pork or any more than a fraction of an egg) he offered an assortment of Kellogg's cereals with Rice or Corn in their names. I explained the joys of "Malt" and the fact that this ruled these cereals out and returned to the breakfast bars I brought from home (thank you EnviroKids) and the many fruit options at the breakfast buffets.

Now for the positives:

1) Eating at a different table each night, I met a lot of different people, including one woman who is allergic to milk. No, not intolerant, actual "rush me to the hospital" allergic. She was thrilled with how careful everyone was being and at the fact that she was being fed so well. If she felt safe, then that is a pretty solid endorsement.

2) The grill out by the pool had a menu on which the only fried food was french fries. This meant by default these french fries were fried in a dedicated frier! I see nothing wrong with a large bowl of french fries as a snack! :-)

3) There were three buffet rooms on the ship, at least one of which (and as many as all three of which) was open at all times 24 x 7. The staff at the buffet instantly knew (or, if as was rarely needed, instantly found out) the ingredients of all of the buffet items. There were certainly some items I couldn't eat (lots of rice dishes had butter) but plenty of others that I could.

Overall the dining on the cruise was a good experience. No, not perfect, but then again my own mother tapes her flour canister shut before I visit for dinner so she doesn't accidentally gluten me!

As with dining out anywhere, make sure you ask and double check on everything. I would certainly consider another cruise with Princess in the future!

Celiac Friendly Spain!

Wow! What a trip! I couldn't believe how Celiac friendly Spain was. I arrived Friday morning (10/10/08) and after checking into my hotel I walked a couple of blocks over to Mana, the GF store of the Asociacion de Celiacos de Madrid. There I purchased a loaf of Schar sandwich bread that came in two sealed pouches (so while you are eating one the other doesn't go stale). I figured that would be enough to get me through a week of breakfasts.

Later that day I stopped off in an Irish pub for lunch, as I started to explain my needs to the Irish bartender (in English), and he interrupted to say "oh, you've got Celiacs, ok." It was the first of many times I was shocked that people knew what that was. That evening at dinner, my waiter was Spanish so I braced myself for a struggle to get him to understand. As I started to explain, no dairy, no wheat, he also interrupted "¿Celiaco, no?" I couldn't believe it.

The following day I attended the first of two weddings of distant cousins on Mom's side of the family. I sat with cousins from the village my grandfather was born in, none of whom speak English. While they were helping me work with the waiter on what I could eat, another of our cousins over heard and offered to introduce me to her daughter - who also has Celiacs. She wasn't particularly impressed with Celiac awareness in Spain and was surprised to hear how much worse it is here in the US.

We spent the next two days out touring with no issues (Spaniards don't really cook with dairy or wheat so as long as I avoided the bread on the table I was fine). Finally we arrived in the village my grandfather was from and stayed with one of my mother's cousins. Her two brothers lived next door and across the courtyard respectively. My uncle (who I was traveling with) explained my food concerns to the three of them and combined with having seen my issues at the wedding we were in good shape.

The following morning, I left my loaf of GF bread in the kitchen and headed out sightseeing for the day. Now mind you, one loaf of bread is more than enough for me for a week and the amounts of food my cousins were putting out on the table at dinner could feed me for a two days! When we returned home that evening, I discovered that my cousin had gone out and bought another loaf of GF bread. This time a full loaf (not the half loaves we get here in the US) from a company called Porcelli. She had also bought a bag of GF ziti. Needless to say I ate until I was stuffed at every dinner that week!

Saturday morning I ended up in a supermarket and found a number of other products by Porcelli - baguettes, pitas, croissants and muffins. Since I was leaving Monday morning and mistakenly believing I could get Porcelli here in the US somewhere (I googled and googled but couldn't find them) I didn't buy anything (but would have loved to try the croissants).

Finally, we arrived at the second wedding Saturday night. With the help of one of my cousin's wives (who is a teacher, and teaches part of her class in English) I again discussed my needs with our waiter. He brought out the manager, who assured me that everything would be ok and that he would replace my bread. Since my cousin's wife had walked away at this point (and my Spanish really isn't that great) I wasn't sure I heard him correctly. Sure enough 15 minutes later, he brought out this GF dinner roll. I didn't get a chance to ask if it was dairy free but decided to risk it (we were staying at the hotel, so if I got sick, my room was only two floor away.) It was amazing! Crispy on the outside, soft in the center and delicious! I couldn't believe it! (oh, and best of all, I never did get sick so it must have been dairy free as well!)

So all and all, I was impressed by the level of awareness of Celiacs in Spain. Now, if I could just get them to accept that I can't eat pork . . . .

Traveling with a food allergy

I’m heading off for Spain tomorrow and it got me thinking about traveling with food allergies. I speak enough Spanish to explain that I can’t have dairy or gluten and since I’m asymptomatic (at least for gluten), I’m not as careful of cross contamination as I should be. Spaniards don’t cook with a lot of dairy so that helps as well. Anyhow, whenever traveling I like to see what resources are available to Celiacs where I’m going (and patronize them). Here in the US, I use these three websites to find GF dining options:

Gluten Free Registry - this site has lists of gluten free restaurants by state. They’ve recently added a searchable map but that map lists all the chain restaurant locations and makes it hard to really find the independents (I can certainly eat at a Charlie Brown’s at home). There is also an option to add reviews to the restaurants (although you should note that those for the chains are grouped together and not specific to any particular location.)

Gluten Free Restaurant Awareness Program - the grand-daddy of them all, this site lists and ranks GF restaurants that have gone through GFRAP training. Best part is a Zip Code search which will display results by distance from a particular zip code!

Celiac Handbook Restaurant List - Another list of restaurants by State. Again, you’ll need to investigate how close these are to where you are going to be.

Going overseas is a little more difficult especially with the language barrier. There are resources out there specifically for Celiac Disease (Triumph dining cards I believe) but those are only useful for gluten. Since I have a number of other issues, I prefer the Food-Info Allergy Dictionary - this site allows you to access a list of common food allergies and phrase inter-translated into 30+ languages (most major world and European languages). What I mean by inter-translated is that it just isn’t English-Spanish but also Spanish-Chinese and Russian-Japanese. Just choose your base language (English is at the top) and then select the other language from a little pull down menu. The result is a pdf file with roughly 200 phrases and allergens listed in both languages. I like to just print out those I’ll need for a trip and highlight my allergies and phrases!

I also did a quick web search for “Gluten Free Spain” and found the Asociación de Celiacos de Madrid . Large portions of their website are in English and the site includes lists of restaurant and stores carrying GF products. Turns out the association has their own GF store in Madrid so I booked a hotel that isn’t too far away and will stop by to get some bread (and cookies maybe) at the start of my trip!

My final advice would be to do a web search on both Celiac Disease and Gluten Free and the name of the place you are going and see what comes up. I found some discussions about traveling in/to Spain on some forums as well as some support groups. And of course, you can always post a comment here and I’ll try to help!