Review of Duke's Seafood

I’m not one to leave reviews, but something happened last night that was very scary for a person with an allergy. As I have a very severe reaction to gluten, we almost never eat somewhere that isn’t fully gluten free anymore. However, after phone calls and in person reassurance about how seriously they take gluten allergies, we have eaten at Duke’s several times. After last night though, we are seriously questioning that judgment call and are weighing whether we will be going back any time soon.

Last night I ordered one of the new items on their menu that was marked GF. After speaking with the waitress about my allergy and confirming it would be gluten free, it arrived at the table with a fried tortilla. I asked the server who brought it out about the tortilla and whether it was fried in house and in a shared fryer as I had an allergy. I was told that if it was marked gluten free then it wasn’t a shared fryer. However, after taking two bites of pieces of fish near the tortilla, the waiter ran back to us and told me to stop eating as he just found out that it was actually put into a shared fryer. After some back and forth with the server and our waitress, it was confirmed that our order was actually marked as an allergy, but even with that label it wasn’t caught that this dish wasn’t actually gluten free at all. So not only was it incorrectly marked GF on the menu, somehow an allergy marker on my order also didn’t catch this.

Luckily, I hadn’t taken a bite of the tortilla yet, and I am so grateful to the server who must have sprinted back to our table to let us know. This just proves how important that it is for anyone with an allergy to always double and triple check everything put in front of them, but it also raises serious questions of how a restaurant who highlights how good they are with allergens to make such a grave mistake. It’s one thing to go to a restaurant and expect for the chance of some cross contamination in a kitchen, but it’s an entirely different thing for the allergen itself to end up on a plate marked safe on the menu, and for a customer who asked for their order to be marked for an allergy. We did continue our meal as we were reassured that everything else would be perfectly fine as the mistake was only made on the other dish as it was recently introduced to the menu, but with more time to think about the seriousness of the mixup I don’t think this was the right decision on our part. It’s a real shame as the restaurant is gorgeous and the food is delicious, but we’re unsure whether we could ever trust the safety of this restaurant again.

In summary, if you have any type of allergy, I would seriously weigh the risks before eating here.

How confident are you that this establishment takes safety precautions against cross-contact?

— Not at all

Is there a gluten-free menu?

— Gluten-free items are marked on the main menu

How much of the menu is available gluten-free?

— Most/All

How would you rate the taste and quality of the gluten-free food you tried?

— Excellent