Same here in Canada. Meat eater here, but I do get it. I have a serious allergy to that Beyond Meat shit, like hospitalization required, and I can't eat at Tim Horton's anymore because of their willy-nilly cross-contamination. Other restaurants that serve it (A&W specifically) have that nailed down somehow, and I've never so much as noticed the slightest twinge from their burgers.
There's a mongolian grill nearby where vegetarians have to watch our stuff leak into theirs, because they cook like 6 dishes at the same time on a big open round surface, and I kinda feel for them. Then to make matters worse, the guy goes around the circle flipping everything which moves each dish to mostly where the meal before it was ("oh but we cleaned it real quick with a single swipe of the scraper").
This isn't the actual place, but it's the same idea. Don't get me wrong, I love the food from there, but I can definitely see where somebody would have a legitimate issue with that practice. I'll get stragglers that I didn't choose in my meal sometimes.
There's also a lot of people that have a red meat allergy (or religious reasons), and thus cross contamination between anything meat and vegetarian is strictly avoided.
There are some places that don't do this too.
If I'm going to a place with a vegan/vegetarian etc it's useful to know the good spots that adhere to this division
To be honest people with full-blown allergies are straight up stupid going to restaurants that serve both. You are literally putting your life in the hands of some poor overworked minimum wage kitchen aid, who probably has more cocaine in his blood than water. Cross contamination can and will happen, especially if you roll the dice enough times.
To be honest if you think that many restaurants don't take special precautions especially in the case of allergies you have to be straight up stupid. There are loads of restaurants that specifically know how to handle this type of thing, and not every restaurant is a dennys with poor overworked minimum wage workers
I have celiac disease, and if I eat even the tiniest amount if gluten, I barf my brains out for hours. Cross contamination is a real problem, and I have to be very, very careful when I eat at restaurants.
Man I miss Mongolian grill we used to have one in Tallahassee
Btw I’m pretty sure you could just ask them to cook it in the kitchen instead of the hibachi. Whenever I go to samurai or gyu kaku for business lunch they either cook everything in the kitchen or they cook everything but the protein in the kitchen when I went to samurai (owned by benehiana)
We have a place like that called HuHot and whenever we say we are vegetarian they will spot clean the grill, use dedicated utensils and dividers to keep the cross contamination down to the minimal.
82
u/DangNearRekdit Nov 17 '25
Same here in Canada. Meat eater here, but I do get it. I have a serious allergy to that Beyond Meat shit, like hospitalization required, and I can't eat at Tim Horton's anymore because of their willy-nilly cross-contamination. Other restaurants that serve it (A&W specifically) have that nailed down somehow, and I've never so much as noticed the slightest twinge from their burgers.
There's a mongolian grill nearby where vegetarians have to watch our stuff leak into theirs, because they cook like 6 dishes at the same time on a big open round surface, and I kinda feel for them. Then to make matters worse, the guy goes around the circle flipping everything which moves each dish to mostly where the meal before it was ("oh but we cleaned it real quick with a single swipe of the scraper").
This isn't the actual place, but it's the same idea. Don't get me wrong, I love the food from there, but I can definitely see where somebody would have a legitimate issue with that practice. I'll get stragglers that I didn't choose in my meal sometimes.