It feels a little as if this is becoming a mini-series in itself: a list of the countries where we’ve successfully managed to find a safe way to eat out with food allergies with both children. In the last year, Mike and I have been impressed by the options we have found in both Italy and New York whilst travelling without the children and our summer in Portugal last year was a great success thanks to the freefrom choices we uncovered there. Our decision to venture to somewhere new this August meant we had to adopt our usual 3-prong approach to travelling with food allergies:

1. Pack an extra suitcase with the bare minimum of everyday essentials that we will need to cater for both G and M in our self-catering accommodation;
2. Relax the rules a little for M and allow him to enjoy the full Greek experience on occasion, whilst keeping him strictly to his restricted diet the rest of the time; and
3. Be prepared by doing some research about restaurants in advance and be willing to explain at length numerous times just how restricted his diet is.

Our careful planning ahead meant that we were all able to eat 3 meals a day without too much stress and we achieved some great successes along the way. We had started a new approach to food trialling about 6 weeks before we travelled, whereby we chose 3 foods to challenge M with over a 3-month period and had strategically picked the ones we thought would be of most use whilst we were in Greece. This is the 3rd way of food-trialling we’ve tried over the last 12-18 months, all with the support of our local hospital, and whilst I still have my concerns about whether this really is the best approach to take, it did allow us more flexibility that we’ve had before. M decided he wanted to trial olives, prawns and bananas and these seemed a good fit with our Mediterranean break.

We found several highlights in Athens, including our perennial favourite, the Hard Rock Cafe, where we ventured on one of our more relaxed days to the topic of M’s restricted diet. He enjoyed every mouthful of his gluten-free burger and chips with great gusto and even though the increased dose of medicines we had agreed with his consultant before we went didn’t fully tamper down his body’s response, it was a real treat for us to see the delight on his face when faced with something a bit different to the varieties of chicken, rice and cucumber that he’s become accustomed to at home. The waiting staff worked hard to accommodate our additional requests around making sure the meals were also dairy-free and the vegetables added to the plate were restricted to just cucumber for both children as we had asked.

When you wander through the Plaka in Athens, you are surrounded by a huge array of small tavernas to choose from, ranging in price and, if I’m honest, authenticity. It was surprisingly easy to cater for M at nearly all of these and the ones we ended up eating at were delightfully keen to prove themselves to us. Every menu seemed to contain grilled chicken and rice and it was just a case of just how much of an accompaniment they were able to serve, with most preparing small salads of cucumber, apple and pear. G tended to play it safe and opted for the easy option of steak and chips – or sometimes steak and rice – though we did manage to convince her to try mouthfuls of our more authentic Greek dinners, which she reluctantly had to admit to enjoying despite herself and her preconceived ideas! One evening we even found a restaurant serving gluten-free pasta and G enjoyed a delicious spaghetti bolognaise, albeit in the wrong part of Europe.

We didn’t really eat out too much on Syros as we instead took advantage of the beautiful local produce that Nick had kindly sourced for our pantry at the Good Life and spent time preparing, cooking and enjoying simple meals at our villa. However, we did choose to eat some lunches at the beachside restaurants and this is where having olives and prawns as a menu option really came into its own as M indulged in some delicious meals including those tasty morsels, whilst munching on the Greek rice-cakes we had managed to buy in both Athens and Syros.