If you live in the UK with a food allergy, you get used to how structured things are. Most menus list the 14 major allergens, restaurant staff are generally familiar with allergy protocols, and laws like Natasha’s Law make sure pre-packaged food is labelled properly. Eating out still needs care (I have been caught out more than once), but the system around you is designed to reduce the risk.
Once you travel abroad, that safety net often disappears. Many countries have no standardised allergen labelling on menus. In some places the menu carries no allergen information at all, and staff may not understand cross-contamination. For travellers with allergies, that means shifting from passive trust to active preparation.
The good news is that with the right tools and habits, eating safely abroad is entirely possible, and some travellers find they become more confident managing their allergy once they have learned to navigate unfamiliar food. Here is how I do it.
Check TrustDiner before you go, search Google Maps in the local language rather than in English, hand over an allergy card before you order, and follow the same six-step routine at every restaurant. Most of the risk abroad is hidden ingredients rather than obvious ones, so read our guide to where nuts hide in the world’s cuisines before you fly.
The first mistake most people make is relying on Google once they arrive. Typing “nut free restaurants near me” into Google Maps rarely produces anything useful; it tends to return vegan cafés and gluten-free bakeries, which are built for dietary preferences rather than medical allergies. The tools below are worth knowing before you go.
TrustDiner grew out of the May Contain allergy community (@Maycontain on Instagram) and has quickly become one of the most useful platforms for allergy travellers, particularly from the UK. It works like Trustpilot or Tripadvisor but for allergy experiences: diners report how a restaurant handled their allergy, whether staff understood cross-contamination, and whether they felt safe eating there.
Because the reviews come from people with real allergies rather than general diners, they are far more useful than a standard restaurant review. Coverage is strongest in the UK and Ireland and is growing in Australia and the United States.
If you are travelling in North America, these two apps are widely used in the allergy community. Both let users rate restaurants specifically on allergy awareness, and the reviews include the details you rarely see elsewhere: whether the kitchen uses a shared fryer, how staff handled ingredient questions, and whether the chef was willing to modify a dish. That is exactly the information you need to decide whether a place feels safe enough to try.
Google Maps is still useful, but only if you search in the local language. Search in English for “nut-free restaurant” in Italy and you get very little. Search for “senza frutta a guscio” and you surface restaurants that cater for allergies but do not advertise to English-speaking tourists. Use Google Translate to find the local term for your allergen first, then search Maps with it.
Google Lens is the other tool worth having – point it at a menu and it translates on screen, which is often enough to spot an ingredient before you ask about it.
One of the biggest risks when travelling with allergies is a simple misunderstanding. You think you have explained your allergy clearly, but language barriers, cultural differences and a busy restaurant get in the way. A card in the local language, handed to the server to pass to the chef, removes most of that.
Ours are free: allergy translation cards in fourteen languages, each with a note on what to watch in that country. That page explains what the cards say and how to use them; the routine below is what I do with one at the table.
Another common mistake is avoiding whole cuisines. People with nut allergies are often told to stay away from Asian or Middle Eastern food entirely, and while those cuisines do use nuts more, avoiding them altogether means missing some of the best food in the world. The better approach is knowing where the allergens are: cashew paste in a korma, pine nuts (or cashews) in pesto, sesame in almost everything in the Middle East and Australia, peanuts in satay and mole, cashews in vegan “cheese”.
That knowledge is a page of its own: hidden nuts in food, cuisine by cuisine, with the question to ask for each dish. Read it before you travel and skim it before you order.
Once you arrive at a restaurant, a simple routine reduces mistakes. When you are hungry and somewhere unfamiliar it is easy to forget the important questions, so most allergy travellers develop a pattern they follow every time. This is mine.
Bring up your allergy as soon as you walk in, then repeat it when you sit down with your server. Waiting until the moment you order makes it much harder for staff to adapt or check with the kitchen, and some restaurants have an allergy menu they can give you instead.
A simple line works: “Before we order, I just want to let you know I have a severe nut allergy. Is that something the kitchen can accommodate?” It gives staff time to speak to the chef and lets you gauge how confident they are.
If you are carrying a translation card, ask whether the waiter can show it directly to the kitchen. That avoids information being passed along wrongly, and in many restaurants the server is glad to have something written down in the local language. It also tends to prompt a more serious conversation with the chef about whether the dish can be prepared safely.
Menus rarely tell the whole story. Three questions reveal a lot about the kitchen: is this cooked in a shared fryer; are nuts used in the kitchen at all; is the sauce made separately or in a shared pan. The answers tell you quickly whether the restaurant has real processes for avoiding cross-contamination.
Often the important information is not what staff say but how they say it. If a server immediately understands the seriousness, checks with the kitchen and comes back with clear answers, that is a good sign. If the response is vague, dismissive or uncertain, it is safer to move on.
Travelling with allergies sometimes means walking away from a restaurant that does not feel right, and that is fine.
One habit I have developed when choosing somewhere spontaneously is reading the menu posted outside before going in. If a large share of the starters and mains clearly contain nuts, nuts are widely used in that kitchen. As a rough rule, if around a third of the menu is nut-based, I eat somewhere else; kitchens that lean on nuts carry a much higher cross-contamination risk.
It is frustrating to walk away from a place you were excited about, but a restaurant where staff are confident with allergies almost always means a more relaxed meal.
If you decide to stay, wipe the table before your food arrives. Restaurant tables, café counters and bar tops carry traces from previous diners, and a quick clean between customers does not always remove crushed nuts or sauce. I carry a small pack of alcohol or antibacterial wipes for exactly this (they live in my hand luggage with the auto-injectors); it takes seconds. If you have no wipes, ask the server to clean the table again and explain why. Most restaurants are happy to.
Even with careful planning, reactions happen. When you are travelling, the difference between a frightening experience and a manageable one is how prepared you were before the trip began.
A severe allergy is a pre-existing condition and has to be declared when you buy the policy, or a claim can fail. What to declare, what a policy pays for and how UK and US cover differ is in our guide to allergy travel insurance.
UK guidance is to carry two (EpiPen or Jext) at all times. When travelling they need to be reachable, not at the bottom of a backpack; I keep mine in a small cross-body bag so I can get to them in seconds. A brightly coloured medical pouch or a red case helps someone else find them in an emergency.
It is 999 in the UK, 112 across most of Europe and 911 in the US, and something else in plenty of places. Memorise it or save it as a contact before you land.
If you travel solo, keep a written note of who to call in your wallet. If you are ever unable to speak for yourself, medical staff need to reach someone quickly.
Our airline allergy audits cover what each carrier does and does not do, and why “nut-free flight” is a courtesy rather than a guarantee.
Use an allergy review platform rather than a general one: TrustDiner for the UK, Ireland and increasingly Australia, Spokin and AllergyEats for North America. Then search Google Maps in the local language for your allergen, because English searches return vegan and gluten-free places rather than allergy-aware ones. Read recent reviews for the words “allergy” and “cross-contamination”.
Whether the kitchen can accommodate a severe allergy, whether the chef can see your translation card, whether the dish is cooked in a shared fryer, whether nuts are used in the kitchen at all, and whether the sauce is made separately. Ask before you order, not when the food arrives, and ask the chef through the server rather than the server alone.
Usually not. Knowing where nuts hide in each cuisine (ground into korma and pesto, peanuts in satay, sesame in Middle Eastern food, cashews in vegan cheese) lets you eat well almost anywhere with the right questions. Our hidden nuts in food guide covers it dish by dish. Some travellers do avoid regions where peanut cooking is universal, which is a personal risk decision rather than a rule.
Use your adrenaline auto-injector as your action plan says, call the local emergency number, and tell staff exactly what has happened so they can help paramedics. Keep the menu and the card you handed over; if you claim on travel insurance, they are your evidence.
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