Celiac Sprue wheat/gluten allergy...any opinions about the restaurants I picked?

[Kris & Steve]

My husband has celiac sprue which is an allergy to wheat & gluten. I plan on making my ADR's at the following restaurants on Oct. 6th. If you have an opinon or experience, good or bad, at any of these restaurants please let me know. The information I have found on this site so far as helped me so much with planning.

Restaurants:
-Shutters - Caribbean Beach
-Mama Melrose's - MGM Studios
-Tony's Town Square - Magic Kingdom
-Kona Café - Polynesian
-Le Cellier - Epcot
-CAP'N JACK'S - Downtown Disney
-Coral Reef - Epcot

Also, if anyone can tell me which counter service places you had good experiences at (dealing with allergies to wheat/gluten) please fill me in.

Thank you! You are all so helpful!

 

[Ambassador]

We have had to be mindful of a wheat allergy, and have had a great dining experience at WDW overall. One difference is that the Epcot WS restaurants are not Disney-managed, and they are not as well-prepared to handle special requests. However, patient and persistent commmunication with server, manager and chef brought good results eventually.

Start by contacting Brenda Bennett[Brenda.Bennett@disney.com] about your needs. She will send you info and add notes to your PS. Follow-up your PS reservations, and confirm the allergy is noted on each record. Lastly, when checking-in, inform the host of your allergy needs, and the process of speaking with the chef begins sooner.

 

[Selket]

Food allergies - my 2nd favorite topic besides diabetes - ha! (ha! because I wish there were cures for everything posted about on this board)

Anyway....my 3 yr old is not celiac but is diabetic and highly allergic to peanuts and other nuts and we had excellent experiences overall there this summer (2 trips). Here is a link to my May '05 report: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=818591&highlight=peanut+allergy+diabetic

We felt that Le Cellier took the most precautions overall but I did speak to the chefs directly before arriving. We also especially enjoyed CRT for dinner and Mama's for the fantasmic dinner package and Crystal Palace for lunch. We also had good luck with Biergarten and really every place we dined was fine. If I made arrangements beforehand most places would serve my son a hot dog or other simple item (rice, plain noodles) even if not on the menu. I think this is what you need to do to assure the restaurants know that your husband has celiac and has the proper items on hand for what he wants to eat. I'd think that he has a much more sophisticated and demanding palette than my 3 year old as well - LOL! So contacting the restaurants beforehand is going to be important.

I 2nd the recommendation to contact Brenda Bennett at MK Foods (you will also find her phone number in several old posts if you do a search on food allergies). Give her a call about 6 weeks to a month before you go and she can email you a list of counter services and cart items that are safe (and unsafe). I know there was some celiac info on there and notes that the chefs would change the oil in the frier, etc. for celiac guests. I found Brenda to be helpful with restaurants other than those right in the MK.

We didn't eat a lot of counter service - I wanted sit down meals because of the heat at the time of year we went and a bit more guarantee we could eat in a timely fashion (due to the diabetes) and have something he could eat waiting. We had good luck with the food service courts where we stayed (CR and CSR) and Peco's Bills and Pizzafari.

Finally I"ll add that perhaps don't expect every meal to be 100% perfect as much depends on the chef you get! I think it also depends on what time of year you go and how busy they are. Celiac, like the peanut allergy, is probably one of the more common allergies they are asked to handle so I think you should have good luck in most places.

**edited to add that it helps to take a look at the menus of where you plan to dine: http://www.allearsnet.com/menu/menus.htm Then he can get an idea of what he wants to eat and find out if the chef can make an appropriate version of it, or if it is safe to eat as is, etc.

Have a great trip!

 

[wellesleyprincess]

I had a wheat allergy. We ate at both Le Cellier and Tony's and they were more than accomodating and helpful. I would also highly reccomend 50s Primetime Diner if your looking for another meal as they were my best experience. Crystal Palace was also wonderful eventhough they had very little advanced warning. Trust me Disney World is great for people with allergies.

 

[SueM in MN]

Besides the menus on www.allearsnet.com, the DIS site has menus too:
http://www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/dining/diningmain.cfm#disneydining
between the 2 websites and the information that has been provided by others on this thread, you should find out quite a bit of helpful info.

The new Passporter WDW For Your Special Needs does have a pretty large section about dining. They have one page specifically talking about gluten free/celiac.

 

[cillakat]

i have celiac and two kids with gluten intolerance (don't know if they have celiac but they have the likely genotype and blood antiobodies) and my youngest, when we went last year was still allergic to dairy, soy, most nuts, most beans. that was fun

anyway, i brough most of our food, but we did eat at cinderella's royal table, rainforest cafe (animal kingdom), cosmic rays, kringla bakeri (norway...just for the blue jello for the kids LOL).

crt, rainforest cafe and cosmic rays took everything *extremely* seriously. i didn't questions kringla bakeri too much. the jello was far away from the glutenous stuff and with the general attention to allergy issues at disney, i wasn't worried.

based on my experience last year, i have no concerns about any restaurant at all. this year we're adding california grill (dinner), akershus (dinner), boma and one more that is yet to be decided.

personally, i'd just choose what sounds optimal based on your own tastes and go from there.

call the restaurant a week in advance as recommended.

the st.john's celiac listserve archives are full full full of posts about postive experiences re: disney/celiac. really i woudln't worry at all. gather info beforehand if you need to to feel comfortable (i did last year...in *spades*) but the bottom line is that the chef will come out to speak with your dh about his dietary needs and will prepare his food. they were *so* careful with our food last year. more careful than I am LOL.


kat in atl

 

[dawnball]

Of those on the OP's list, the only one I really have concerns about is Kona Cafe. They use a lot of soy and wheat, and I felt very limited eating gluten free there. I think I was on about my fourth entree choice before we foound something I could eat. There was one safe dessert, and my GF salad (2 salads were your appetizer options) never came.