Allergy: a damaging immune response by the body to a substance, especially a particular food, pollen, fur, or dust, to which it has become hypersensitive.
Intolerance: an inability to eat a food or take a drug without adverse effects.
Preference: a greater liking for one alternative over another or others.
There’s a big difference between these. We want to do our best to accommodate you and ensure you have the absolute best experience possible with us, but if you’ve got one of the above, you gotta be real clear with us about which of the 3 it is.
Our head chef has a gluten & lactose intolerance. (Yes, we know the irony of him being a pastry chef here….poor sod). One of our superstar team members is a vegan. We work hard to always make sure that there’s a variety of dishes on the menu, so that anyone with intolerances or dietary preferences can find something tasty to eat. Our ‘build-your-own’ pies literally let you choose your own fillings and sides, and some are available in gluten-free and vegan options. We know the pain of wondering whether there’ll be anything you “can” eat at a restaurant, and we like to think we’ve got everyone covered.
However, as some of you may know, we’ve got a pretty tiny kitchen. It’s impossible to avoid ingredients that we may have on the menu at some point. – eg nuts. Serious allergies are a totally different ball game to those intolerances and preferences. Please let us know if you have any allergies that can do you serious harm. You can always call or email us in advance to have a proper chat with our chefs who will be able to go into detail about what’s being used in the kitchen.
Sometimes, we will have to say “no” to you. We don’t like doing it, you don’t like hearing it, but them’s the breaks. We aren’t doing it to hurt you, promise! Can we do a gluten free beef pie? Sorry – no. It’s cooked with stout. You know your body better than anyone. Can you handle a little bit of gluten? Maybe once on a weekend? Or must you avoid it at all costs? With an intolerance this is something only you can really decide.
When it comes to making changes to our set dishes to accommodate your allergies/intolerances/preferences, although we will do our best….. sometimes this just isn’t possible. For example, if you don’t like onions and would prefer the dish without…or if you’d like the chorizo ‘on the side’. In some cases we will have made a sauce/filling earlier in the day, and these little guys have already been added and can’t be easily removed. But if you want us to leave the tomatoes off the salad, no problem! Prefer vegan cream? No worries just let us know. Wanna skip the chips and have a few more veggies instead? Sounds a bit wild, but we got ya!
For those of you with pretty set-in-stone preferences, we have a TON of different options on our menus from our pies, specials, to snacks. There’s really something for everyone. And here’s a little morsel of info for you – whilst you’re born with around 10,000 taste buds which mostly get replaced every two weeks(ish), as you get older their numbers start to decrease. Less taste buds means that flavors that you may once have found too intense, are now totally palatable. Go ahead and try something new, or something that you’re not sure about. You might surprise yourself!