Hit and miss with local restaurants

Here's our tally so far.

Hit: Calvillo's Mexican Buffet.
Calvillo's makes extremely yummy food, The best aspect is that it's a buffet, and we can pick and choose the safe foods for Chloe without too much guesswork. Another reason I like it is that the chef will custom-make any dish for you. Not that we need to, with so many great offerings that are already safe for Chloe such as beans, salads, fruit, tamales, and corn tortillas. It's a little on the pricy side to take the whole family on a casual outing, but definitely worth it for peace of mind and great personal service from the cook.

Hit: St. Ives Pub.
I was a little worried going into this one because pub food generally means cheesy foods, or foods covered in bread crumbs and deep fried (or both). However. What we did for Chloe is order a turkey bacon guacamole wrap without the cheese, the guacamole (I don't trust sauces and dips unless I make my own, they're obviously safe like salsa, or I've talked personally with the cook), and the wrap. We ended up with a plate of turkey, bacon and tomato slices, shredded lettuce, and plain potato chips. Slightly unorthodox but definitely safe. Bonus: she loved drinking iced water out of a cute cup with a straw.

Half a Hit: True Grit Steakhouse.
Again, a little worrisome, not because of the food itself but because of how it's prepared. Steakhouses love to smother everything in butter. We were out of luck on the vegetables, because they were apparently boiled to within an inch of their life and then completely done in with a boatload of butter. But, we were able to order a plain baked potato and then cut enough of the tender meat inside a large steak for Chloe to be reasonably certain she was not ingesting more than atom-sized amounts of the butter the steak was sauteed in. What made it not quite a full hit was the fact that we couldn't get anything fresh for her, but she dug right into the potato and meat. The fact that John Wayne movie posters plastered the walls somewhat made up for the excess of butter.

Miss: Subway.
We ordered a sandwich for Chloe with the meat and veggies wrapped in one paper and the bread and cheese wrapped in another paper. At the restaurant, all Chloe was interested in was the ham and the olives, so we fed her that with no problems. I put the tomatoes and pickles into a cup and sent it with her lunch at school the next day. Big problems. She broke out in hives just from touching the veggies--on her hand, arm, and mouth. Luckily she didn't ingest any. On the Subway web site, I researched carefully the ingredients lists and their allergy information to see if a preservative might have caused the reaction. Of course, tomatoes and pickles and such are inherently safe, as the web site proclaims and no odd preservatives were listed. But, tomatoes and pickles and such which have been handled by gloves that have touched bread and cheese previously...not so good. Subway is definitely out.

More on local and chain restaurants in a later post.