When organising food for yourself when travelling, or for welcoming incoming travellers, you may need to provide or look for food and drink shops, catering suppliers or restaurants providing:
On the plane you can usually request several diet foods in advance but Singapore Airlines can't give me no shellfish options. I have to go for kosher or vegetarian. Advantage that I would be served a special meal first.
Gluten Free food (see next post)
Healthy food
Halal food (no pork in savoury food, no lard in savoury or sweet food); halal label preferred
Kosher food (no pork, no lard, no shellfish, no mixing of meat and milk so no meat sandwich with buttered bread and no meat in butter and cream sauces) kosher label preferred
Lactose intolerance - some Asians cannot digest milk products including butter, coffee made up with milk such as 2 in one or 3 in one etc
Low calorie food
Low fat food
Nut free or nut warning for nut allergy
Fruit allergy or intolerance
Non-alcoholic drinks
Safe chilling (no ice) or safe ice
Safe water
Sugar free drinks
Untouched by human hand (cutlery, servers or wrapped food for anybody recovering from cancer treatment and / or low immune system)
Vegan (no animal products, not just no meat - no fish, no eggs, no milk, butter, yogurt,
Vegetarian (some vegetarians will eat fruit and vegetables and cereals
Some people who eat halal will be satisfied with kosher food because it bans pork. Some people who require halal or kosher food will eat
Paper disposable plates, cups and cutlery are a useful option for those with food allergies. Don't unwrap paper cups or chopsticks or cutlery getting your hands all over them because some of your guests will not eat from plates and cutlery nor drink from glasses without washing the item. Some waiters think they are being helpful by unwrapping everything but the purpose of the wrapping is to stop the waiter's hands being all over your cutlery and crockery and drinking glasses.
Sea Food
See food is an umbrella word covering both swimming fish with fins such as salmon, tuna, plaice, cod, shark, but also shellfish (crustaceans with a hard shell), molluscs - soft floating creatures such as jelly fish, eels and octopus.
River and freshwater fish may include trout.
Some fish are both in rivers and seas.
Shellfish
Visiting China and Singapore and Malaysia, you will often be served rice or casserole dishes containing prawns and shellfish.
Cockles are in k w a y t e o w (rice cake strips - flat noodles with sauces such as fish). (Sorry, spell checker wants away meow.)
k w ay is rice cake or cooked rice for making rice cake
t e o w is an article or in the context of food a strip
Thai food also has fish cakes and fish sauce.
So called crab meat might not contain crab which is more expensive. However, I do not take the risk for myself or others with allergies. I was once on a press trip with travel journalists to Italy and we visited a restaurant specialising in seafood. I wanted to try a dish which had prawns on the side. But the PR insisted on ordering a vegetarian meal for me.
The PR for the whole trip insisted on sending every seafood dish back, including salmon and trout which had no sauces and had been nowhere near crabs and lobsters and squid. I was keen to have the smoked salmon. But she was adamant that I was not to touch a morsel.
On a previous trip one of her male guests had been taken ill due to an allergy and the girl organising the trip had needed to organised the stricken journalist's trip to hospital, the funding of the hospital stay, the return tickets on different flights.
The trip organiser herself accompanied the sick person to hospital to pay and translate. She missed the outings and parties, unable to escort the others and thank the hosts. She had the anxiety of calling the family. So no way would she allow me near anything which might cause a reaction. Even if I was willing to take the risk, she wasn't!
The French mostly happily eat horse meat and frogs' legs and snails.
The British are sometimes averse to horseman and frogs' legs and snails. They are also often horrified by the idea of eating dogs, seen as 'man's best friend'.
Some tourists are keen to try local foods and would be disappointed to be fed a diet of chicken and chips, which they can eat at home and are delighted to try new foods. However, in a group of four, forty, or four hundred, somebody is likely to want a special diet.
Angela Lansbury
On the plane you can usually request several diet foods in advance but Singapore Airlines can't give me no shellfish options. I have to go for kosher or vegetarian. Advantage that I would be served a special meal first.
Gluten Free food (see next post)
Healthy food
Halal food (no pork in savoury food, no lard in savoury or sweet food); halal label preferred
Kosher food (no pork, no lard, no shellfish, no mixing of meat and milk so no meat sandwich with buttered bread and no meat in butter and cream sauces) kosher label preferred
Lactose intolerance - some Asians cannot digest milk products including butter, coffee made up with milk such as 2 in one or 3 in one etc
Low calorie food
Low fat food
Nut free or nut warning for nut allergy
Fruit allergy or intolerance
Non-alcoholic drinks
Safe chilling (no ice) or safe ice
Safe water
Sugar free drinks
Untouched by human hand (cutlery, servers or wrapped food for anybody recovering from cancer treatment and / or low immune system)
Vegan (no animal products, not just no meat - no fish, no eggs, no milk, butter, yogurt,
Vegetarian (some vegetarians will eat fruit and vegetables and cereals
Some people who eat halal will be satisfied with kosher food because it bans pork. Some people who require halal or kosher food will eat
Paper disposable plates, cups and cutlery are a useful option for those with food allergies. Don't unwrap paper cups or chopsticks or cutlery getting your hands all over them because some of your guests will not eat from plates and cutlery nor drink from glasses without washing the item. Some waiters think they are being helpful by unwrapping everything but the purpose of the wrapping is to stop the waiter's hands being all over your cutlery and crockery and drinking glasses.
Sea Food
See food is an umbrella word covering both swimming fish with fins such as salmon, tuna, plaice, cod, shark, but also shellfish (crustaceans with a hard shell), molluscs - soft floating creatures such as jelly fish, eels and octopus.
River and freshwater fish may include trout.
Some fish are both in rivers and seas.
Shellfish
Visiting China and Singapore and Malaysia, you will often be served rice or casserole dishes containing prawns and shellfish.
Cockles are in k w a y t e o w (rice cake strips - flat noodles with sauces such as fish). (Sorry, spell checker wants away meow.)
k w ay is rice cake or cooked rice for making rice cake
t e o w is an article or in the context of food a strip
Thai food also has fish cakes and fish sauce.
So called crab meat might not contain crab which is more expensive. However, I do not take the risk for myself or others with allergies. I was once on a press trip with travel journalists to Italy and we visited a restaurant specialising in seafood. I wanted to try a dish which had prawns on the side. But the PR insisted on ordering a vegetarian meal for me.
The PR for the whole trip insisted on sending every seafood dish back, including salmon and trout which had no sauces and had been nowhere near crabs and lobsters and squid. I was keen to have the smoked salmon. But she was adamant that I was not to touch a morsel.
On a previous trip one of her male guests had been taken ill due to an allergy and the girl organising the trip had needed to organised the stricken journalist's trip to hospital, the funding of the hospital stay, the return tickets on different flights.
The trip organiser herself accompanied the sick person to hospital to pay and translate. She missed the outings and parties, unable to escort the others and thank the hosts. She had the anxiety of calling the family. So no way would she allow me near anything which might cause a reaction. Even if I was willing to take the risk, she wasn't!
The French mostly happily eat horse meat and frogs' legs and snails.
The British are sometimes averse to horseman and frogs' legs and snails. They are also often horrified by the idea of eating dogs, seen as 'man's best friend'.
Some tourists are keen to try local foods and would be disappointed to be fed a diet of chicken and chips, which they can eat at home and are delighted to try new foods. However, in a group of four, forty, or four hundred, somebody is likely to want a special diet.
Angela Lansbury
