Allergy Watch: The Halzephron Inn, Cornwall.

As you may have realised from my post about the prime ministerial debate, I suffer from an allergy to tomatoes and an intolerance to gluten and wheat. The difference between an intolerance and an allergy is that the first will make you be sick for a while, the second will kill you.

Last week (10th to 17th April), I was on holiday in Cornwall with my family, my boyfriend, and my brother's girlfriend. We were staying in a lovely self-catering place in The Lizard. On the Tuesday, we'd spent a day at the beach and decided to dine out for dinner. We went to the Halzephron Inn, a dining pub that is known for high quality food. The family had been there once before, in 2006, which was before I got my allergy but after my Mum had developed her nut allergy, and we'd been fine. When my Dad had phoned to book the table during the day, he'd mentioned the allergies but the people at the place hadn't said anything.

We arrived at the Inn and asked for our table. The woman behind the bar, who was obviously in charge of everything, asked us to tell her, once again, what allergies we had. I listed them, along with the severity, and she went off to see what was suitable for us from their menu. I was expecting her to come back saying 'well you can't have the X, but you can have Y, or we can do Z but without the sauce'. However, she came back and promptly refused to even serve us because we were too risky. Bearing in mind this was in the middle of the Inn, in front of other customers, this was very embarrassing. I quietly said I understood and decided to go home and have a spud.

My Mum had other ideas, and said we were quite cabable of choosing our food and determining what risk we were at. The woman said again she couldn't serve us, and that we should have phoned in the morning so they could have done special food. We pointed out that my Dad had phoned earlier and no concerns had been raised then. We eventually sat down and had dinner, but we had been made to feel like freaks. We've never been refused service at a restaurant before, and felt this was unacceptable. We also felt that it would have been better if the woman had quietly taken us to one side and said 'i'm really sorry but chef says our particular menu tonight isn't safe for you'. As it was, she practically yelled about our problems to the whole pub. 

My Mum and I have decided never to go back to the Halzephron Inn again, so I'm posting this to warn anyone with an allergy about a place that doesn't seem to want our custom.