Planning a group dinner around dietary restrictions

Last updated 19 August 2026

Booking one table for a group means every place has to work for everyone at it. This page covers what the common terms actually exclude, which restrictions are medical rather than chosen, and how to collect them from a group without making anyone explain themselves.

This page is not medical advice. Food allergies and coeliac disease are medical conditions, and how severe one is varies from person to person. If someone in your group has one, the two authorities are that person and the restaurant — ask them both directly, and treat anything you read here, or anywhere else, as background rather than clearance.

What do the words actually mean?

Most of the friction in a group booking is vocabulary. People use these words precisely about themselves and loosely about each other, and “I think she’s vegetarian?” is how a table ends up somewhere that has nothing she can order.

Vegetarian is not one thing

The default meaning is lacto-ovo: no meat, poultry or fish, but dairy and eggs are fine. Some vegetarians avoid eggs, some avoid dairy, and many avoid gelatin and rennet without describing themselves as vegan. If it matters for where you book, the useful question is not “are you vegetarian” but “is there anything on top of meat you don’t eat?”

Vegan is stricter than most menus assume

Beyond the obvious, vegan excludes honey, gelatin, and animal-derived stock. It also catches things that look incidental: butter in a “vegetable” risotto, parmesan in pesto, egg wash on pastry, and some wines and beers, which are traditionally clarified using isinglass from fish. A restaurant with one labelled vegan main is a materially better booking than one where a vegan can, in principle, assemble something from side dishes.

Halal and kosher vary by person, not just by rule

Both are systems of religious observance, and how strictly an individual keeps them differs enormously. Some people who eat halal avoid only pork and alcohol and are comfortable anywhere; others eat only certified meat, which usually means choosing a specific restaurant rather than a specific dish. Kosher observance at the strict end requires a certified kitchen, so it is a decision about the venue and not about the menu. Ask the person what they need. Do not infer it from the religion.

Gluten-free covers three different situations

Coeliac disease is an autoimmune condition, not an allergy: gluten causes intestinal damage, trace amounts count, and it is not a preference at any level. Non-coeliac gluten sensitivity is real, varies in severity, and is generally about quantity rather than traces. Some people also avoid gluten by choice. All three say “gluten-free” and only the first requires a kitchen that can genuinely keep it separate.

Which restrictions are medical, and which are preferences?

This is the distinction that matters most, and the one groups get wrong most often. Everything in the list above is worth accommodating, but they do not fail the same way.

• Allergies are immune reactions and can be life-threatening. Peanut, tree nut, shellfish, fish, egg, milk, soy, wheat and sesame account for most of them. An allergic reaction is not a bad evening; it can be an emergency.
• Coeliac disease is autoimmune. It is not an allergy and it is not a preference, and trace exposure causes real harm.
• Intolerances — lactose intolerance being the common one — are digestive rather than immune. Genuinely unpleasant, not dangerous, and often dose-dependent, which is why someone lactose intolerant might accept a little butter and refuse a cream sauce.
• Religious and ethical restrictions are not negotiable either, and the fact that they are not medical does not make them softer. Asking a vegan to make an exception is the same social move as asking anyone else to.

The practical consequence: for allergies, ask one extra question — whether traces and shared equipment matter. “I avoid nuts” and “I cannot be in a kitchen that handles nuts” lead to completely different bookings, and only one of them can be resolved by reading a menu.

What is cross-contamination, and when does it matter?

Cross-contamination is when a dish picks up something it does not contain as an ingredient — shared fryers, shared grills, a knife that cut the wrong thing, flour in the air. It is invisible on a menu, which is why a menu is never the answer for a serious allergy or for coeliac disease.

It matters when the person’s threshold is traces rather than portions. For most preferences and intolerances it is not a factor at all. When it is a factor, the only reliable move is to call the restaurant before booking and ask specifically: not “do you have gluten-free options”, which every restaurant says yes to, but “can you cook for a coeliac guest”, which a kitchen that cannot will usually tell you honestly.

What gets missed most often?

Ingredients that do not announce themselves. These account for a large share of the “I checked and it was still wrong” cases:

• Fish sauce and shrimp paste in Thai, Vietnamese and Filipino cooking, including in dishes with no visible seafood — curries, papaya salad, many stir-fries.
• Anchovy in Caesar dressing, Worcestershire sauce, puttanesca, and some tapenades.
• Chicken or beef stock in soups, risottos, rice and gravies that are otherwise vegetarian.
• Lard or suet in refried beans, pastry and some breads.
• Gelatin in mousses, panna cotta, marshmallow and many sweets.
• Ghee or butter in Indian dishes labelled vegetarian, which is fine for vegetarians and not for vegans.
• Ground nuts as a thickener in korma, satay, mole and some pesto.

How do you ask a group without making it awkward?

The awkwardness almost always comes from asking one person in front of everyone, late. Five things fix most of it:

1. Ask everyone, not the person you suspect. A blanket “anything anyone doesn’t eat?” costs nothing and singles out nobody.
2. Ask before you pick the place, not at the table. Once a booking exists, saying something means asking everyone to change plans, so people stop saying anything.
3. Ask what, not why. “Anything you avoid?” is a question. “Why are you vegan?” is a debate, and people who have had that debate enough times will simply eat the salad and say nothing.
4. For allergies, ask the severity question once. Whether traces and shared equipment matter changes which restaurants are possible at all.
5. Write it down somewhere the group can see. The information is useless if it lives in one person’s memory, and asking the same person the same question every few weeks is its own small insult.

How do you check a place actually works?

• Look for restrictions the menu labels, not dishes that could be modified. One labelled vegan main is worth more than four dishes that might work without the cheese.
• Check whether the labelled options are actual meals. A restaurant whose entire vegan offering is two side dishes technically clears and practically does not.
• Treat online menus as out of date. They frequently are, especially for seasonal menus and specials.
• Call for anything medical. A phone call before booking is the only step here that reliably prevents the bad version of this evening.

How Booth handles this

This is the problem Booth was built for. Each person sets their dietary tags once on their own profile, and those tags follow them into every plan they join — so the group asks once, ever, rather than once per dinner, and nobody has to be the person who remembers. The group’s combined needs sit at the top of the room where everyone can see them, and every place someone suggests is checked against all of them automatically, with any conflict named out loud: which place, and which person it fails.

It does not replace the phone call for a serious allergy. Nothing does. It replaces the part where six people try to hold seven constraints in their heads while scrolling a group chat.