The biggest complaint we had with the night is Rebecca's meal. As we know she is celiac (allergic to gluten) and she emailed a week in advance, asking what she could eat. A nice email came back telling her she could have certain foods with modifications, and she showed this to the waitress as she ordered. She ordered the Olives, Chorizo, Danish fetta and Turkish bread as an entree - gluten free (and our receipt reflected that) so that means the Turkish bread had to be omitted (as her email stated).
It came out with Turkish bread on it. This is not gluten free. Thankfully the bread wasn't touching anything else, so I had a piece. We were both annoyed that while we had specifically ordered gluten free, this was disregarded. We didn't complain though, since the bread was at least physically separate and hadn't contaminated anything. The fetta was in fact not Danish, and the texture was much too hard. It was likely Australian fetta. Don't try to fool us.
I ordered a sirloin steak with mushroom sauce - nothing else on the menu particularly appealed to me. While the steak was reasonable, the sauce tasted like gravox and came out quite cool after an extended wait. The salad was limp and the leaves were stale, nothing interesting at all here. The steak itself was below the average pub-grub level. Rebecca's came out another 10 minutes later - I joked with her that "maybe they accidentally made it not-gluten-free and had to stop and redo it".
I was wrong. Her lamb salad came out with two big pieces of Turkish bread on it. I explained to the waitress that Rebecca couldn't eat it since it had bread on it, it was not gluten free. I told her it had to be redone. As she took it away, I watched. The waitress brought it to the kitchen and was talking to someone behind the counter - a hand reached out and pulled the bread off and sent it back out.
As she brought it out, I started to get annoyed. "I watched that - the bread was simply taken off. It is contaminated now - it has to be remade. It's not gluten free". I sent it back. Meanwhile, Rebecca is getting hungrier. The waitress brought it back to the kitchen and it was taken off the counter. The manager came to us and apologised, "Sorry guys its going to be another 5 to 10 minutes because we need to recook the lamb. Can I offer you a complimentary drink while you wait?". Props to him for offering to resolve it.
However, the salad came out 2 minutes later. Cold. I was very wary, and knew something was wrong. I told Rebecca not to eat it, but she was so hungry and angry she did anyway. After a few bites, she could feel it. There was gluten in it, and they had tried to deceive us again. I suggested she throw up in the salad so they could take it back like that, or maybe throw up over the chefs.
When it came time to pay, the manager had made an about-face. He started off "I don't believe that my team would have done that", "I have never had a problem like this before", "Maybe your order was mixed up with another tables", and the real kicker when we showed him the docket, marking her dishes gluten free, "Sometimes people aren't very allergic". Yes, clever, like people with peanut allergies sometimes aren't very allergic. Her main was removed from the bill, thankfully.
Nevertheless, the blatant deceit and denial of error has earned Botanica a zero star rating, and is now in our hall of shame (Including Harbor Terrace, The Monk and My Place). Do they really think they can hide things from people with allergies?
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