Safe & sound for coeliacs

Travelling can be anxiety-inducing for those of us with dietary restrictions.

The unknowns of foreign ingredients, language barriers and understanding of health can trump the excitement of visiting somewhere new.

“Am I going to be able to eat anything?” It sucks the joy out of exploring food cultures and may even stop people from travelling to certain places.

After all, food is a necessity before it is fun.

I’ve seen this in my dad, who is allergic to nuts and eggs, who has travelled the world extensively but has avoided Asia, assuming he’d wouldn’t find anything to eat and have trouble communicating.

But I’ve found many Asian countries flexible with food restrictions and, after encouragement from me and with the assistance of Google Translate, my dad now has the confidence to expand his horizons.

I travel knowing that my coeliac disease will not be understood or catered for and I accept the chance that most of my meals will be white rice with a side of cross contamination. Coeliac disease is a chronic autoimmune condition where eating gluten (a protein found in wheat, barley, rye and oats) causes the immune system to attack the small intestine.

And so, I assume that in the Maldives I’ll be foregoing anything worth eating.

Instead, I have the best food experience I’ve had since being gluten free.

The most astounding part of my dining experiences in the Maldives is that I only had to mention being coeliac once on arrival at the SO/ Maldives resort.

It is a standard response for restaurants to seek no clarification on the broader complexities of the disease and wrongly assume what I can and cannot eat, so it worries me until my first meal.

“You are gluten free, right?” I’m asked upon receiving the menu, and I don’t think any coeliac in the world has responded with as much joy as I do to that question.

It instils a confidence in me that I am going to be looked after, and it proves to be true time and time again.

The communication across staff in all three restaurants of SO/ Maldives is next to none. The chefs know me by name and assure me that there is no cross contamination, while the waitstaff have the greatest understanding of gluten that I’ve ever witnessed.

They are able to tell me the allergens of the meals off the top of their heads, with no “let me go and ask the kitchen” required.

Not only this, but because the food is made to order, the chefs are happy to adapt many of the meals that do contain allergens, not by removing a core ingredient that makes the food redundant, but by substituting something else that is just as good.

“You wouldn’t even know that was gluten free” is music to my ears, as my travelling companions sample my meals.

I am so reassured that I am in capable hands that after day one, I stop double checking that I can eat what is being placed in front of me. It is liberating, not feeling like a burden or that I am missing out.

And this is the goal, with staff telling me they will go out of their way to make all guests comfortable and safe; catering for allergies and intolerances, religious needs like halal and “even Jainism”, director of sales and marketing Kapil Mathur tells me. “They cannot eat the root vegetables, so we order in what they need for their stay here.”

Safety and comfort are the biggest requirements for those of us travelling with dietary restrictions, and you can rest assured that you will be well looked after at SO/ Maldives, in a country that wants you to explore its melting pot of cultures without a worry besides “when will my next meal be?”