I work in a Hispanic town, and got dragged out to lunch to a taqueria. I specifically got someone to translate and ask if there was corn in the rice and they said no, and it came out with corn kernels in the damn rice. It's pointless to even try and eat out when you have food allergies.

Love the Worms.

I also have one of those little travel books with pictures of every food, transportation method, city service, etc. that you could think of, so all I have to do is point to pictures where I don't speak the language.

I was the one that ordered these, the email sent by Jim at Select Wisely was as follows:

Michael, thank you for your order yesterday. Attached are your SelectWisely cards.

You can print them, cut them out and fold them lengthwise to resemble our laminated card. Make as many copies as you need.

I have also included our List of Nuts and our Emergency card in each language in case you need that. No charge for these.

Please let me know if you have any problems opening the PDFs. And if you have a minute upon your return (assuming you are going on a trip), please drop us an email and let us know how the cards worked out.

Best regards,
Jim
www.selectwisely.com

It was good to see that they had an actual human send an email, and that he cared enough to include something else that could help me in the unfortunate event I needed to use it. Being deathly allergic to nuts, I feel like doing this was above and beyond what the company needed to do.

i wish all chefs were as understanding about dietary restrictions as those guys

Anyway, always talk to the chef. Never take the waitstaff's word for it, unless it's an allergy that doesn't bother you that much if there's a reaction. Any good restaurant should make accommodations, but you have to talk to the person who cooks the stuff!

[www.celiactravel.com]

We found it most helpful to ask to speak to the cook or chef, give them a card, try to explain the situation with our rudimentary language skills, and emphasize "NO SAUCE. NONE AT ALL."

Everything went well, though he's not as sensitive as someone with a severe peanut allergy would be. I'd hate to try dealing with that during travel.

And no, Google translator doesn't work for basic translation half the time. It definitely doesn't work for specifics like food allergies, especially because vocabulary varies a lot from country to country.

What kind of waitress waits until after the person starts eating the food to actually check with the kitchen about a life threatening allergy? Just goes to show you, even in English, the human factor makes your best efforts fail sometimes. The cards are definitely better than nothing though, since people who don't speak your language often say "yes" or "ok" when they don't understand what you're saying.

as a frequent overseas traveler, these will not work. here's why:

1. go someplace to eat
2. show card
3. waiter/waitress/owner says "yup, yeah, no problem"
4. you eat
5. you leave
6. you get sick
7. ?

been through this many, many times. even speaking the native language does not guarantee what you require/mean will actually "translate."

Thanks for relieving my suspense. ;)

Some (actually, most) of you will probably find it easier to just purchase a card - but I like to do things myself. :)

@AgentMunroe: My thoughts exactly. When it is literally a matter of life or death...wouldn't you rather spend a couple bucks to make sure you will come back alive rather than in a box?

You may or may not know this, but Office Depot sells (or used to?) an ID card kit that could be used for this. You're supposed to print the PDF card on their supplied piece of paper and then attach it to an included plastic card.