Student blogger Mara Bernstein says students with allergies shouldn’t avoid Applebee’s.
Sometimes, a real sit down dinner with your friends is just what you need at the end of the week. Not far down Route 1, there sits a common favorite, Applebee’s. Personally, I haven’t been in an Applebee’s since I started eating gluten free. However, I have found that they are working on a gluten free menu.
The Applebee’s website provides a series of menus that show you all of the dishes that people with soy, egg, dairy, peanut, shellfish, tree nut, wheat, fish, and gluten allergies can eat. There is a separate menu for each allergy to avoid any confusion.
There are a lot of dishes available and they even split each menu up into appetizers, steaks, soup, sides, chicken, salad, salad dressing, seafood, sauces, children’s menu and desserts. This makes it seem like there are a ton of options for people because all of those dishes naturally don’t contain your allergen.
The catch is at the top of each menu. There is a paragraph above the food that explains that the standard recipe does not contain the allergen, but in bold letters it says that they cannot guarantee that there is no cross contamination. With this being said, I don’t think that Applebee’s needs to be avoided all together, which I used to think it was. Just like it was with Domino’s, depending on your level of sensitivity will depend on what you can eat.
After looking through the menu there are plenty of things that I would be able to eat that sound delicious that I would try. For example, I would not hesitate to have their chips and salsa with a steak dinner and a side of vegetables and rice or potatoes. That seems like a pretty standard meal for someone on a gluten free diet.
Applebee’s also gives nutritional information. It shows your what is less than 550 calories of endorsed by Weight Watchers. They also show how you can make the dish healthier by reducing fat or calories. Underneath the tips, there is a menu that shows all of the nutrition facts, so everyone can find guilt free things to eat.
Even though some precaution may be needed, there is no reason to let an allergy stop you from going to Applebee’s. The fact that you can make it healthy is icing on the (gluten-free) cake.
