Kitchen Oil: Coconut Oil
Spoon rating: Four
Recommended for: Garlic allergies, egg allergies, gluten allergies, milk allergies, and nut allergies.
Not Recommended for: Soy allergy
So after a long hiatus from blogging we have returned with a long awaited review of Mannen Restaurant and Sushi bar in Ridgefield. Now you might be asking "What was that I just read an Asian food restaurant on a blog that reviews restaurants for their ability to serve patrons with food allergies?"Well before you do a double take you need to stop by this restaurant for dinner. At first The King's Taster was very skeptical as well. We were concerned that the seriousness of food allergies might not be comprehended or that language issues might result in an unintentional mistake. That said we were convinced to give it a try after many trusted families with food allergies commented with rave reviews and urged us to see for ourselves.
So with epi-pens in hand we ventured to try something that had been missing from our palettes for years, Hibachi style Japanese food. We chose to try this style of dining rather than a traditional sit-down dinner because we would be able to see any screw-ups right in front of us. Our first test of course was to call the restaurant. We informed them of our allergies and asked them if they felt confident that they could meet our needs. We overheard the hostess discussing the situation with the kitchen staff and they all seemed to agree that they could safely meet our allergy needs. So feeling slightly confident we made reservations for a later dinner starting at 7:30pm, which in hind-site was a brilliant choice and we recommend it for any family looking to dine here. This is because the hibachi dining section of the restaurant seems to clear out well before the traditional dining section does and helped us to ensure that we had our own grill. It is critical that you have your own grill when dining at this style of restaurant and in the future we would go so far as to request a separate grill when making a reservation. The grill was cleaned exquisitely before our food even touched it. By using a solution of water and soap, which is poured onto a piping hot grill surface the stove is scoured clean.
The ingredients in this style of cooking were simple. Whatever meat or vegetable you choose, rice or noodles, and onions. Lemon, soy sauce, and a variety of other house sauces are often used in the cooking. We requested beforehand that only soy sauce and lemon be used when flavoring our food because we were concerned that an ingredient list would not be readily at hand for the sauces. If you have a garlic, spice or peanut allergy I would recommend this precaution as well. Clean utensils were used for the cooking, which was a pleasure to see, although we were very disappointed that one of the allergens we had noted to the staff, garlic, had been wheeled out onto the cart of food. The chef quickly noticed this and removed the separate plate that contained the allergen and brought out all new utensils as a precaution. Again the benefit of this style of cooking is you can point out to the chef any issues that you notice. From there on out we enjoyed the show and could see that our food had been prepared allergen free.
Although we would definitely not recommend this style of cooking for soy allergies because the food would be minimally flavored gluten free allergies, peanut allergies, and garlic allergies may find a welcome Asian flavored meal here. For gluten allergy concerns we recommend requesting rice only for your meal and reviewing this article about soy sauces before dining here to ensure that you are comfortable with your dining experience:
http://www.celiac.com/articles/23061/1/Is-Soy-Sauce-Gluten-free/Page1.html
In addition Mannen noted after discussing gluten allergies with them that they do serve gluten free soy sauce but that you must let them know beforehand so that their servers can ensure that they use the correct soy sauce. Now cross contamination is a possibility in this kind of setting because a separate pan would not be used, but we can't really imagine a more thorough cleaning method for the grill. That said if you are concerned about cross contamination it may be a good idea to ask the staff if you can observe how the stove tops are cleaned to see if you are comfortable with the method meeting your allergy needs. Now although this restaurant does not get high marks with regards to outreach, there are no descriptions of their menu ingredients on their webpage, and they do not use an oil that is allergen free, they do have good staff coordination, checkpoints within their staff, the ability to recognize that an extremely clean preparation area must be used when cooking, and an adaptable menu. So all in all it is probably your best bet in the area for a safe Hibachi style dining.
