Pand O and Coeliacs

[Kopchadder8]

On a 5 week cruise, 3 weeks in, and as a coeliac my choice of food is pathetic. Every day in the buffet there is one gf choice from 10 hot meals. Never a hot pudding, one cereal choice for breakfast, the list goes on. Numbers of us gluten freers have complained but nothing gets done. I have complained to 6 up the chain but all you get is platitudes and indifference, everyone saying they will sort it but nothing gets changed. In the sit down restaurants we have to order the day before and all that does is give the cook chance to remove anything that is gluten, although invariably ,as all the p and o food is pre prepared and the cooks ( not chefs as they have no culinary input) just warm it up they cannot change the dish which means I can't have it , further reducing my choice. Don't come on p and o. There are lots of cruise lines to choose from.

[terrierjohn]

3 hours ago, Kopchadder8 said:

On a 5 week cruise, 3 weeks in, and as a coeliac my choice of food is pathetic. Every day in the buffet there is one gf choice from 10 hot meals. Never a hot pudding, one cereal choice for breakfast, the list goes on. Numbers of us gluten freers have complained but nothing gets done. I have complained to 6 up the chain but all you get is platitudes and indifference, everyone saying they will sort it but nothing gets changed. In the sit down restaurants we have to order the day before and all that does is give the cook chance to remove anything that is gluten, although invariably ,as all the p and o food is pre prepared and the cooks ( not chefs as they have no culinary input) just warm it up they cannot change the dish which means I can't have it , further reducing my choice. Don't come on p and o. There are lots of cruise lines to choose from.

We sat with a coeliac yesterday on Iona and he was full of praise, the waiter went over his following days menu and just about everything could be offered as GF and prepared in the segregated part of the galley.

Have you advised P&O that you need a special GF diet?

[Camberley]

A dear friend of mine who is coeliac sailed with us on Iona last year: her first time with P&O. Being used to cruising with other companies and potential food issues, she gave very clear notification in advance - and checked each night for the following day just in case. She actually loved the selection on offer and each night had, in theory, a varied selection of some nice looking and what she felt was delicious food. Sadly she spent most of the cruise sick because of cross-contamination from non GF foods. And it wasn’t because of any seasickness: she assured me she knows her body if she is ill because of ingesting gluten etc. P&O had a kind of “sorry but we try our best” response, which was really poor.

 

However, she still went with P&O again earlier this year and apart from one meal she most of the cruise without being sick from cross contamination. For me even one meal messed up is bad - and there could be very severe implications for some people.

[Snow Hill]

31 minutes ago, Camberley said:

A dear friend of mine who is coeliac sailed with us on Iona last year: her first time with P&O. Being used to cruising with other companies and potential food issues, she gave very clear notification in advance - and checked each night for the following day just in case. She actually loved the selection on offer and each night had, in theory, a varied selection of some nice looking and what she felt was delicious food. Sadly she spent most of the cruise sick because of cross-contamination from non GF foods. And it wasn’t because of any seasickness: she assured me she knows her body if she is ill because of ingesting gluten etc. P&O had a kind of “sorry but we try our best” response, which was really poor.

 

However, she still went with P&O again earlier this year and apart from one meal she most of the cruise without being sick from cross contamination. For me even one meal messed up is bad - and there could be very severe implications for some people.

That is very worrying, my OH is coeliac and we haven’t had problems previously as we were assured that gluten free meals were prepared in a separate kitchen in order to avoid cross contamination. From what you have said that no longer appears to be the case and I am afraid a “sorry but we try our best” response is not acceptable.

[Ladyshopper23]

6 hours ago, Snow Hill said:

That is very worrying, my OH is coeliac and we haven’t had problems previously as we were assured that gluten free meals were prepared in a separate kitchen in order to avoid cross contamination. From what you have said that no longer appears to be the case and I am afraid a “sorry but we try our best” response is not acceptable.

It's not a separate kitchen as such, but it is a separate part of the galley which is specifically used for preparing allergy/special order meals. I'd be very surprised if they've got rid of this, but if they have then that's not good news.

19 hours ago, Kopchadder8 said:

On a 5 week cruise, 3 weeks in, and as a coeliac my choice of food is pathetic. Every day in the buffet there is one gf choice from 10 hot meals. Never a hot pudding, one cereal choice for breakfast, the list goes on. Numbers of us gluten freers have complained but nothing gets done. I have complained to 6 up the chain but all you get is platitudes and indifference, everyone saying they will sort it but nothing gets changed. In the sit down restaurants we have to order the day before and all that does is give the cook chance to remove anything that is gluten, although invariably ,as all the p and o food is pre prepared and the cooks ( not chefs as they have no culinary input) just warm it up they cannot change the dish which means I can't have it , further reducing my choice. Don't come on p and o. There are lots of cruise lines to choose from.

I'm really sorry you're experiencing such a bad time. I'm actually staggered that this is happening, as P&O are normally amazing for gluten-free.

Who is it you've actually complained to onboard? And what have they said, and then presumably not carried through what they said they would? I'm shocked, and would definitely be trying to email the executive office shoreside to try and get some assistance.

P&O are the cruise line I recommend the most for gluten-free when others ask about gluten-free cruising, so it's really disappointing to hear how much they're failing you and others on this cruise. Which ship are you on?

On our cruises, when ordering the night before, there has been no issue in adapting dishes that haven't been already marked as gluten free, or cooking something entirely different (I'm also vegetarian, so sometimes the marked GF dishes are meat and fish so I have to order something else). 

I don't think the buffets are amazing, although they do tend to allergen mark, and on both the ships I've been on (Britannia and Iona) they had a special diets counter where you could get all the GF bread, crackers, cakes etc. There has also been the people in yellow aprons who have been happy to go into the kitchen to get fresh food to make sure it hasn't been contaminated on the buffet. However, outside of the buffet I've always been able to get safe GF pizza at Taste, and on Iona there is the fish and chips at They Quays (you can ask for GF), so these always make a good alternative to buffet stuff.

Have you been to any of the paid for restaurants, and are they any different? 



 

[Ladyshopper23]

6 hours ago, Camberley said:

A dear friend of mine who is coeliac sailed with us on Iona last year: her first time with P&O. Being used to cruising with other companies and potential food issues, she gave very clear notification in advance - and checked each night for the following day just in case. She actually loved the selection on offer and each night had, in theory, a varied selection of some nice looking and what she felt was delicious food. Sadly she spent most of the cruise sick because of cross-contamination from non GF foods. And it wasn’t because of any seasickness: she assured me she knows her body if she is ill because of ingesting gluten etc. P&O had a kind of “sorry but we try our best” response, which was really poor.

 

However, she still went with P&O again earlier this year and apart from one meal she most of the cruise without being sick from cross contamination. For me even one meal messed up is bad - and there could be very severe implications for some people.

It wasn't too clear what your friend did in relation to their meals Camberley - you said they looked at the menu for the next night? Did they actually make a pre-order, or did they just look and see there were some meals marked as GF, so decided that would be fine and then ordered at the time?

P&O are very good for marking up their menus, and a lot of their menu options are marked up as gluten free - far more than any other cruise line I've sailed on. However, unless you pre-order your meal in advance, then the meals will just come out with everyone else's and will have been made in the main galley, where not as much care will have been taken to avoid cross contamination (obviously not everyone that is gluten free has coeliac disease, so for some people this won't be a problem and it's fine for them to just order at the time). By pre-ordering, you should (in theory) ensure that your meal is made in the separate area of the galley that is specifically for allergy/special order meals, and so it should be a lot safer. Just like in a land based restaurant though, there is always that slight chance of cross contamination unless the kitchen is 100% gluten free, which if course it isn't.

I'm so sad to read about these bad experiences on here. If you see my signature you'll see I've sailed on a number of cruise lines being gluten free, and P&O has been the best of the lot (closely followed by Disney, but I don't have the budget to sail with them as often as I'd like to cruise, and would rather do 2 or 3 P&O cruises than one Disney cruise!).

[Camberley]

1 hour ago, Ladyshopper23 said:

It wasn't too clear what your friend did in relation to their meals Camberley - you said they looked at the menu for the next night? Did they actually make a pre-order, or did they just look and see there were some meals marked as GF, so decided that would be fine and then ordered at the time?

P&O are very good for marking up their menus, and a lot of their menu options are marked up as gluten free - far more than any other cruise line I've sailed on. However, unless you pre-order your meal in advance, then the meals will just come out with everyone else's and will have been made in the main galley, where not as much care will have been taken to avoid cross contamination (obviously not everyone that is gluten free has coeliac disease, so for some people this won't be a problem and it's fine for them to just order at the time). By pre-ordering, you should (in theory) ensure that your meal is made in the separate area of the galley that is specifically for allergy/special order meals, and so it should be a lot safer. Just like in a land based restaurant though, there is always that slight chance of cross contamination unless the kitchen is 100% gluten free, which if course it isn't.

I'm so sad to read about these bad experiences on here. If you see my signature you'll see I've sailed on a number of cruise lines being gluten free, and P&O has been the best of the lot (closely followed by Disney, but I don't have the budget to sail with them as often as I'd like to cruise, and would rather do 2 or 3 P&O cruises than one Disney cruise!).

She looked ahead, discussed with MDR and made a preorder, as she is used to doing on other lines. Which you would think would be good enough!
 

It was clearly not good enough.

 

And with so many elements of cruising we all get varying experiences. It was just a shame for her that first time, and to a lesser extent that second time

Edited March 22 by Camberley

[Ladyshopper23]

14 minutes ago, Camberley said:

She looked ahead, discussed with MDR and made a preorder, as she is used to doing on other lines. Which you would think would be good enough!
 

It was clearly not good enough.

 

And with so many elements of cruising we all get varying experiences. It was just a shame for her that first time, and to a lesser extent that second time

Yep, you would think so. That is really bad.

Wonder what is going on with P&O then? It seems surprising that they've gone from dealing with allergies/special diets so well to doing it so poorly.

[terrierjohn]

3 minutes ago, Ladyshopper23 said:

Yep, you would think so. That is really bad.

Wonder what is going on with P&O then? It seems surprising that they've gone from dealing with allergies/special diets so well to doing it so poorly.

It's probably ship and chef specific, however as I reported the coeliac on one of our tables on Iona was highly delighted with the choice and quality of his selections.

[Garden_Girl]

Does this apply to peanut allergy sufferers too?  We sailed with RCI last time and they were amazing at ensuring our allergy sufferer was very well catered for so hoping P&O would be the same. 

[purplesea]

My mother has a allergy to cheese (and any product related to rennet) and she has always been well catered for. 

[Clodia]

I have a severe allergy to the tomato sauce in which baked beans are cooked, I always see the Head Waiter on day 1 and they provide me with a table to myself at breakfast, because the sight and smell of baked beans makes me ill as well as eating them so I cannot share a table as if someone orders beans I have to leave. They have always been very accommodating.