The Prawn Butter at a 180-Cover Wedding
It is 19:15 at a 180-cover wedding at the Riverside Hotel. The banquet event order lists the bride's aunt, Ms Chen, as 'no shellfish - severe'. The starter, a seafood bisque that the kitchen had recorded as cream of vegetable soup, has already been cleared, and Ms Chen has eaten two spoons of it. The main course is roast chicken with prawn butter sauce. Plated mains are being run to tables 12 to 16, and Ms Chen's table is 14. She has now told a server that she carries two epinephrine auto-injectors and cannot eat the main. The kitchen is running 180 banquet covers plus a 60-cover à la carte restaurant, and the sous chef says the chicken can simply be 'scraped off' and re-plated. The executive chef is not on site.
1. What happens in the first ten minutes? Give the order of actions and say who does what.
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Order of actions
- Stop the plate. The server and banquet manager stop table 14's mains before they land. Nothing is scraped, re-plated or returned to the pass.
- Assess the guest, not the menu. Two spoons of a shellfish bisque have been eaten and she has an anaphylactic history. Ask directly about symptoms - lip or throat tingling, swelling, breathing, rash, nausea. Have her auto-injectors on the table in front of her, not in her bag. If there is any respiratory symptom or widespread rash, call emergency services immediately, and let her or a companion administer the auto-injector as prescribed. Do not wait to see whether it gets worse.
- Nominate one person to stay with her - the banquet manager - and keep a clear path for paramedics.
- Isolate the table's service. Hold all plates for table 14, and check whether any other guest at that table ordered the same dish.
- Tell the kitchen and the client. The sous chef needs to know in person, and the bride's family should be told discreetly by the banquet manager, not discover it from a radio message.
Why this order The medical risk is running in real time and the plating risk is not: substituting a plate takes minutes, but an untreated reaction can escalate in that same window. And a scraped plate would be a second, avoidable exposure - prawn butter is in the sauce, not on it, so scraping removes nothing.
2. How do you get a safe main to Ms Chen, and what has to be verified about the rest of her meal?
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Build the plate from clean, not from the line
- A plain portion of chicken, cooked on a clean tray or in a fresh pan, with no sauce from the banquet batch. If the chicken was basted or marinated with anything containing shellfish, it is not usable - check the recipe card, not the memory of the cook.
- Fresh board, fresh knife, clean pan, clean gloves. The banquet pass is saturated with prawn butter; a plate assembled there will be cross-contacted.
- Cover and label the plate with her name and table, and have it carried by the banquet manager or a designated runner who confirms her identity at the table before it is set down. Never let it go out on a tray of look-alike covers.
- Offer a simple alternative if the kitchen cannot guarantee the chicken: a plain grilled protein or a vegetable plate, plated first, before the rush.
Verify the whole meal, not the main The starter already failed: the kitchen had the bisque listed as cream of vegetable soup, so the written recipe and the allergen record disagree. Every remaining course for her must be checked against ingredients: dessert (gelatine, nuts, egg), dressings, breads and butter (some spreads contain shellfish extract in Asian menus), and drinks. Check the recipe cards, then check the labels on the containers in the kitchen - the recipe card is only as good as the person who wrote it.
Key point The chef's 'scrape it off' suggestion is the single most dangerous move available. Cross-contact is a real exposure, not a fussiness issue.
3. The guest recovers without hospital treatment. What follow-up and system changes does this incident demand?
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Immediate follow-up
- Incident report within the shift: times, what was served, what symptoms occurred, what was done, who was informed, whether emergency services were called. Signed by the banquet manager and the executive chef.
- A documented conversation with the client and with Ms Chen, including any offer made, and a note on the booking record.
- Review of the BEO against the actual recipes for all 180 covers - other guests may have recorded requirements that were similarly not translated.
Why the system failed Three separate breaks, not one. The BEO note was never transcribed to the recipe or plating sheet. The bisque was misdescribed in the kitchen's own documentation. And no allergen briefing happened at the pre-service line-up, so the server learned about a life-threatening allergy from the guest at the table rather than before service.
System changes
- A written allergen matrix per dish, owned by the executive chef, reviewed whenever a recipe changes, and matched to each BEO.
- An allergen briefing at every banquet line-up: names, table numbers, dishes to be avoided, and who plates the substitute.
- A named-plate rule for allergy covers, plated on a separate clean surface, never on the main pass.
- One trained allergen lead per shift, and a rule that the sous chef's judgement on a live allergy can be overridden by the banquet manager without argument.
- Record the corrective actions and check them at the next function debrief; an incident report that produces no change is just paperwork.