Expand@andiesenji, sorry about your "catfish" experience.
Glad you were able to save yourself. What a shameful reaction by the manager! Fortunately, that kind of ignorance is becoming rarer as more people realize the liability to them involved, and that is a good thing. I didn't really get the whole allergy thing myself, until a lady I worked with at the YMCA who was directly involved in managing our afterschool programs for thousands of kids explained to me that some kids who walked into a movie theater where popcorn was cooked in peanut oil could instantly go into anaphylaxis. That hammered the point home that allergies are no joke to me. I just wish the picky eater, manipulator, control freak types did not exploit this, because it's what's makes folks not take it seriously.
@kayb, you sound like the kind of person I would love to have working at any restaurant where I ate.
Especially with an expensive and so delicious food as lobster, or even corn on the cob, margarine should be a crime.
A lot of people didn't take allergies serious thirty years ago but now more people are aware, since their have been some highly publicized deaths from allergic reactions.
I've been allergic to alcohol since the early 1980s, it developed slowly over time - I was never much of a drinker but had a scare one evening when I took a sip of a margarita and my voice abruptly changed, hoarse and raspy. I thought it was the salt on the rim of the glass and wiped it away but with another sip I lost my voice entirely. At that time I carried an emergency shot kit, as the Epipen was not universally available and the expiration times were not as long as epinepherine in glass ampules.
I saw my allergist the following Monday and he really didn't believe it was the alcohol but did some scratch tests on my back and said, yes, I was allergic to alcohol, pure grain alcohol so it wasn't a strain of yeast or other additive.
From that time I have always been careful about desserts, many include raw liquor. I can cook with wine but it takes hours to reduce the percentage of alcohol in foods, much longer than most people realize. Now there are charts which detail the times required but twenty years ago, most chefs assumed flaming a dish would "drive off the alcohol."
Regarding margarine, I never liked it and refused to eat it. To me it always tasted like it had kerosene in it. I'm a supertaster, have many more taste buds than normal so I taste flavors that many people can't sense. They say elderly people lose the sense of taste but I'm now 77 and I can still pick up faint flavors that others do not notice. And that includes alcohol. Not long ago I attended a party where the host was grilling hamburgers and dosing them with a "secret sauce" before serving. I asked if it contained liquor and he denied it but his wife said it did and gave me a spoon with just a dab on it. I could taste the bourbon and said so, then asked for a bare hamburger absolutely no sauce. He was a bit miffed but complied and I avoided an unpleasant incident.
He really thought I was just being contrary but I showed him the MedicAlert bracelet I wear that states, Anaphylaxis to Alcohol.
