Touring Chili's Restaurant

by Kelley Lindberg


Every summer, I work with several other moms to arrange educational experiences and field trips for our kids during the summer – it’s kind of a co-op summer day camp. Last week, we went on a tour of the Chili’s Restaurant in Layton, Utah.

The main reason I chose this Chili’s is because I know my son’s best friend has been able to eat there despite his allergies to milk, egg, nuts, peanuts, and seafood. His mom has worked with one of the managers there several times, and they have always agreed to make his dinner safe for him.

When I called and explained to the manager Charles that we wondered if our group of 11 kids and 5 moms could have a “behind-the-scenes” tour of the kitchen, he bent over backwards for us. He had us come at 10:00 in the morning (before the restaurant opened), gave us a tour of the whole kitchen, had one of his managers (Scott) talk to us about what kind of training it takes to become a cook at Chili’s, and so on.

They also took the time to talk to us about how they handle food allergies, from how they separate their food preparation areas and their grill surfaces, to the menus they can show their customers. Chili’s actually has a whole set of allergy information on their website – updated every month – that breaks down their menu by the 8 most common allergens. If you’re allergic to milk, they have a list of suggested items you can order. If you’re allergic to eggs, there’s a different list for you. If you have multiple allergens, it’s a little more complicated, because you have to compare the lists until you find items that work for all your allergies. But still, the lists seem complete and very helpful. You can download the Chili’s Allergy Information here.

The managers printed out a copy of all 8 allergen menus for each of the kids in our group (2 of them have food allergies, but all of them care about each other), and answered all our questions. We were all very impressed with how helpful the manager and his staff were, and how they really seemed responsive to our food allergy needs in particular.

There’s never a guarantee, of course, when it comes to food allergies – accidents can happen at any time – but it’s nice to see yet another restaurant chain really take food allergy issues to heart and understand how important it is to take their customers’ concerns seriously.

Thanks, Chili’s, for giving us such a great tour… and for serving us such a wonderful and SAFE lunch afterwards!

Children’s Menus Are My Friends

I don’t want my baby to grow up. And not just for the normal reasons, like hormones, teenage angst, driver’s license agonies, and dating.

No, my concern is much bigger: I don’t want him to stop ordering off the children’s menu.

Yep, that’s right. I’m that shallow.

I like that he’s still 9 and still content with mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, and burgers. That makes me happy—and not just because it only costs $5 (although that is certainly a nice bonus). My main problem is that once he starts ordering off the adult menu, it’s going to be a lot harder controlling the cross-contamination with nuts.

After all these years of navigating kids’ menus, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with where we can eat and what he can order. And the chance of cross-contamination is minimal – when they dump frozen nuggets onto a plate and microwave it, there’s a lot less chance that they will somehow mix with the walnut-vinaigrette dressing on the adult salad.

But now that he’s getting older and more adventurous in his eating habits (“Look, Mom, they have grilled shrimp!”), the possibility of his food coming into contact with nuts will begin to go up dramatically.

When he was really little, the only foods he ate were Cheerios, grapes, and chicken nuggets. Every night for a whole week in Hawaii when he was 2, I cooked chicken nuggets in the hotel microwave, cut them up, put them in a baggie, and took them with us to restaurants. He was happy with his baggie of chicken, and his dad and I dined on lovely restaurant fare in peace.

That was easy.

Now I realize that soon he’s not going to be satisfied with a hot dog from the children’s menu when he knows there’s a sirloin steak on the very next page. I guess I knew that this time would come eventually. It was too much to ask that he would go off to college with a box of baggies and a Costco bag of nuggets.

Last night, we went to a barbeque place for dinner, and I asked the server about the barbeque sauce, the meat, and all the places where nuts might be lurking. My son loves barbequed meat, so I knew I had to be prepared for him to tackle the adult side of the menu.

Then what does he do? Orders a bowl of mac and cheese.

Maybe I’ve got another year or two before my baby grows up, after all.