Category Archives: A Land Down Under

Joy

25 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in A Land Down Under, Nut Allergy

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cupcake 7

Joy.

So very appropriately named. Joy is a little chain gourmet cupcake store in Melbourne that I’ve just discovered.

Joy is one of those cutesy boutique stores (2 in Melbourne CBD, one in Chadstone shopping centre and one in Doncaster) with every cupcake flavour under the sun. Each one looks more delicious than the last. Salted caramel… red velvet… dark chocolate… rhubarb… lemon meringue… jam donut… cinnamon sugar… you name it – they’ve probably got it.

cupcakes 2

I first went to Joy to get a co-worker a little birthday treat. As I began gazing at all the delicious bundles of Joy in front of me (knowing full well that Allergians don’t really get to indulge in such treats), I saw a big sign with familiar lettering – NF, DF, GF, V. I don’t know why I even thought to ask, but for some reason I did:

Allergian: “when you say ‘nut free’, what exactly do you mean?”.

Expecting the normal answer of ‘well, there’s no nuts in the cupcakes, but there may be traces and…’ I then noticed that the all-familiar normality of cakes/desserts littered with nuts was non-existent. There were in fact only one or two cupcake flavours with nuts, and these were banished away to the corner (just the way the “NF, GF, DF, often taste free cupcakes normally are!).

Nice lady behind the counter: “The NF cupcakes are entirely nut free and are made in an entirely different factory.”*

Ok ok I know what you’re thinking. That’s too good to be true and doesn’t ever happen, right? Yeh – I didn’t believe it either. Anyways, for whatever reason I didn’t treat myself that day (and my jeans probably thanked me).

But a few weeks later, I was doing some shopping in Chaddy and walked past this joyful cupcake stall again. I thought I’d treat myself (shopping is cardio right?). I asked the lady behind the counter again, in case this store was different to the Melbourne CBD store.

Well – you betycha – I received the same response. Entirely NF. No traces, no risk of traces. I think it’s interesting that Joy doesn’t market themselves as the highly allergy-friendly place that they are. Whilst I cannot judge their cupcakes against those of other similar stores, based on the number of people in their stores, they either clearly make great cupcakes or there are a lot of people with allergies.

So I took the plunge. Even though I eat at restaurants that serve nuts and eat packaged foods which say “may contain traces of nuts”, this seemed too good to be true. It was way too foreign to be ordering a cake/dessert at one of these boutique dessert stores.

I thoroughly enjoyed my cupcake (ok fine I had two, but who’s judging?). I ordered a salted caramel and a dark chocolate and they were so gooood!

As I bit into these delicious cupcakes, and brought joy to the little girl in me (who had missed out on all the deliciousness that most little kiddies get to enjoy), I realised just how easy it was for this little cupcake store to bring joy to us Allergians. THANK YOU JOY – I thought you deserved a special mention!!

cupcake 3cupcake 5

* Disclaimer: I’m not sure whether this is the same for the other types of Allergens. Please make your own enquiries before consuming!

Coffee-blanca – Part 2

23 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in A Land Down Under, Milk Allergy and Intolerance, Nut Allergy

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Source - "Coffee Break" by Russavia, CC-BY-2.0

“Coffee Break” by Russavia, CC-BY-2.0

Now that you’ve all had your coffee break..

Coffee-blanca – Part 1 discussed the transformation of the Melbourne coffee scene, where lactose free (LF) milk, almond milk and coconut/rice milk are more commonly making an appearance in cafes, to the celebration of us lactards. But there is a downside to this sweet delicious trend as well.. especially the risk of cross-contamination for nut Allergians. Importantly, there are still not enough cafes serving LF options! C’mon.. we need our coffee fix!

But wait.. there’s more – Coffee-blanca – Part 2:

  1. The coffee mix-up

We’ve all experienced taking a sip of our coffee and discovering we been given the wrong order. Some coffee connoisseurs, like my dad, can tell just by looking at their coffee.

One of the big coffee mix-ups is failing to use soy milk in a coffee. It isn’t an infrequent occurrence for the soy part to be left out. And that’s even after paying up to 60 cents extra for it!

A hot choc at one of my fave cafes, take 2 after they forgot my soy!

This is clearly very risky for those with allergies. Nut Allergians may accidentally end up with an almond milk drink. Or, as is more likely to happen, a cow’s milk Allergian may end up with cow’s milk instead of soy milk.

I have a friend, lets call her T, who is allergic to cow’s milk. Not intolerant. Not mild allergy. More like.. lungs close up and she can’t breath allergy. She developed this later in life, and I find that in such cases, the Allergians tend to be far less neurotic than I (and perhaps most of us who were allergic from a young age). When we go on coffee dates, she orders her soy latte and I tell her to make sure the café knows she is allergic and not just intolerant. This is one of the problems with the trend of intolerances – cafes do not take allergies AS seriously, as they assume you will just get a sore stomach. Which, trust me, is not just a slight inconvenience. I think that when a person orders a soy, LF or almond variety of milk, baristas need to be extremely careful to ensure that the milk ordered is what the customer gets.

Side note: I thought I would mention an interesting experience whilst on the cow’s milk allergy topic. There is a café near my house where I occasionally order a soy hot chocolate. They make delicious hot chocolates. They sprinkle chocolate flakes on top of the froth and at the bottom of the hot chocolate. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of ordering soy? This isn’t the only café at which I have seen this done. Surely a café should check whether they can use real chocolate where a person has ordered soy? The same goes for the chocolate powder/liquid used to make the hot chocolate – cafes should be cautious as to whether or not the product they use contains milk, and alert those customers who order soy if this is the case.

  1. The sugar spoon

I am really glad that I have a platform from which to write about this. This is one of my pet hates. I am sorry if I ruin future coffee experiences for you.

Coffee shops generally provide sugar in one of 4 ways:

  • sugar sachets. Fine.
  • sugar in a tub with a spoon. Fine.
  • sugar with a special sugar-pouring-friendly lid. Fine.
  • sugar in a tub with no spoon. Not fine.

It is this option (d) that really gets to me. Perhaps this is me being picky or overly neurotic. But firstly, I find it gross and secondly, it is worrying to me as an Allergian. Sure, 9 times out of 10, a person will take their spoon, put it in the sugar jar, put it in their coffee, and drink their coffee. But where a person decides they need more sugar, or where a person just doesn’t care at all, they will take their wet, possibly-slobbered on spoon and dunk it back into the sugar jar for more. NO!! NOT OK!! Risk levels increase, obvs, where almond milk is served.

I have personally stopped going to particular cafes that only offer this option (d). It is not that hard to provide a spoon.

End rant.

  1. Frequent sipper cards

Finally, this is another topic that I happy to vent about. I am more than happy to pay extra for soy milk or LF milk and I can understand the reasoning for it.

But.

In June/July, I completed a 3-week internship in the CBD. In between Southern Cross station and my office, I stopped by each morning at the same café, Langleys, for my morning coffee. Each morning, I ordered a soy drink, and received a stamp on my frequent sipper card.

Come day 8, it was time for my free drink. Yay! I ordered the very same order as the previous 7 days and gave my frequent sipper card to redeem my free coffee. I was told that while my drink was free, I HAD TO PAY 50 CENTS FOR THE SOY. Say whaaaaat??

I hate it when cafes do things like this. Did they think I was ordering the soy milk to take advantage of the fact that it was free? People don’t just voluntarily order soy milk. I had earned my free soy. 50 cents was not going to have any effect on the success of their CBD cafe, or to me for that matter. But the impact on customer loyalty is huge.

Cafes should just not do this. End of story.

Until next time..

An Allergian Abroad

Coffee-blanca – Part 1

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in A Land Down Under, Milk Allergy and Intolerance, Nut Allergy

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My travels throughout South East Asia, the US and Europe have definitely shown me one thing… The Melbourne coffee scene is one of a kind. We have the whole thing down pat. Melbournians love their coffee. We also love brunch. And Instagramming photos of food. And we know how to make great coffee (something I definitely can’t say for most of the rest of the world).

Like our multicultured society, our café scene is extremely diverse and has something for everyone. We have the standard, the quirky, the organic, the upmarket…

I am a coffee lover. Before I had ever sipped a coffee, at a young age I had decided I would be a coffee drinker. With a dad passionate about drinking, and making, coffee, I was always so destined. I certainly wouldn’t have made it through 5 and a half years of law school without coffee. We have a great quality coffee machine at home that I have mastered. Tragically, when I developed a lactose intolerance in year 11, it obviously got much more difficult to enjoy coffee when out and about. Until I discovered LF milk makes great coffee, which I could use at home. I couldn’t bear the taste of soy milk, especially not with coffee!

It is for this reason that I am ecstatic that in recent times, Melbourne cafes have fine-tuned the coffee scene so that it is better suited to the #foodie trend and fad diets such as GF. For the most part. I do have some pet peeves and concerns I’d like to share!

  1. Milk options

I love this. Many cafes have (somewhat surprisingly) stocked soy milk as an alternative to cow’s milk for years. But only in the past couple of years has the entrance of other milk choices become a thing.

Almond milk and (occasionally) hazelnut milk are milk options often offered in cafes. I can’t say that this is an exciting trend for this Allergian, and see point 2 in relation to this.

More importantly, I am now starting to see the very-much-welcomed-by-me lactose free (LF) milk served in cafes! This is music to my ears! And my coffee. A Google search of Melbourne cafes serving LF milk failed to find any results so I’ll share with you a few of my fave cafes that serve LF milk. I’d love to hear from readers about your own LF milk spottings throughout Melbourne!

Loco in Elsternwick has been serving Zymil (one of the main brands of LF milk in Australia) for a couple of years. One customer used to keep her own bottle of Zymil in the fridge for when she came to have coffee. When other lactard customers saw the Zymil, they naturally excitedly asked for it so Loco began to stock it! What a win!

The café that I visit on my way to work in the morning, Bull Run in the CBD, also serves Zymil. This café has a vibrant, charismatic take away coffee stand out the front, which offers a range of milk options, with music pumping in the morning.

bull run

I have also discovered LF milk at the Attic café in the CBD and Rupert & the Fig in Brighton.

Needless to say, as great as this is – there are just not enough!! With soy milk such a staple at cafes, I am really hoping that LF milk raises to this standard. I would expect that there is enough of a demand for it. Zymil and Liddells’ LF milk are available in long-life, and customers would be willing to pay extra or drive further for this option!

Cafes are also beginning to offer further milk varieties, such as coconut milk and/or rice milk. Whilst both good options, they are likely to have a bigger impact on the taste of the coffee, which many coffee-lovers would argue is inexcusable! LF milk tastes just like cow’s milk, only it is a bit sweeter.

  1. Cross-contamination

The availability of all these different milk options is both a blessing and a curse for me. It’s great to be able to go to a café and order my weak cappuccino with LF milk. But with this blessing also comes the curse of almond milk (and other nut milks).

For those of us with nut allergies, this can be a really big problem. I hadn’t really thought about this until I went to a particular cafe and discovered they served Zymil when I saw it sitting alongside the cow’s milk, the rice milk and the almond milk. As I was standing there watching their incredibly-efficient 3 person coffee-making arrangement that they’ve got going on, I thought about the risk of cross-contamination due to use of almond milk during the busy morning coffee rush. I let them know about my allergy and they ensured me that they would be careful.

But I think it is important that:

a) cafes be really careful with the use of almond milk. They should take precautions to ensure that there is no risk of cross-contamination e.g. the consistent use of different milk jugs for different milk varieties, cleaning the frothing stick properly between uses (with a fresh cloth where almond milk has been used), using different spoons to stir the coffee, no milk mix-up etc. This issue really also applies where a cow’s milk Allergian orders soy milk (see my next post on this point).

b) It is obvs our responsibility as Allergians to alert a coffee shop to our allergy if there is a form of nut milk on the menu.

Coming soon to Allergian Abroad: Coffee-blanca Part 2!