Cooking oil used: Mostly canola oil with some menu items being cooked in butter, liquid margarine (contains soy) and highly refined soybean oil. Please discuss the cooking oils used in your menu choice with your server if you have a soy allergy.
Spoon Rating: Three
Recommended for: egg, fish, gluten/wheat, milk, MSG, peanut/tree nut, shellfish, and soy
There is nothing we love to do more than sound the trumpet when we have found a new restaurant that can cater to clientele with food allergies and the Ruby Tuesdays at the Danbury Fair Mall was able to do just that on a recent family night out. Not only did this restaurant have no wait time and a far less noisy atmosphere than the other restaurants at this mall, but when we informed the hostess that we had a gluten allergy present in our party she immediately pulled out a small binder that contained a separate gluten free menu. The menu was extremely helpful in helping our party determine a safe gluten free food option to eat would be. Further investigation revealed that the menu we were presented with was printed from their website which has an Allergen/Sensitivity Menu Guide. This guide is fantastic because it creates menu guides for the following major allergies: egg, fish, gluten/wheat, milk, MSG, peanut/tree nut, shellfish, and soy. We commend them for creating such a user friendly menu for so many of these common food allergies and for their use of canola oil in much of their kitchen cooking.
That said some improvements can be made. For example the menu we were presented with was two months out of date and although there were no noticeable changes to the menu items we recommend reviewing their website before visiting them to ensure that you have the most current version of the Allergen/Sensitivity Menu Guide. Also they often cite the salad bar as a menu option for each of their food allergy menu guides but in our opinion we would steer clear of this menu item because although each of the foods are in separate containers the chances of cross contamination are high since they can not control their guests usage of the tongs and serving spoons in this area. The biggest downside of this approach is that if your allergens fall of the beaten path you won't have much luck here because ingredient lists are not provided for any of their menu items, which is a huge oversight in our minds.
Lastly in such a high volume restaurant we would most certainly ask you to exercise caution if your allergies are sensitive to kitchen utensil cross contamination and always request that a separate pan be used for your food item if you are in this category. All in all definitely add this to your list of favorites in our area. With a three spoon rating they are a keeper for many of the major food allergy groups.
