July 27, 2026

Chef Cards for Celiac Disease: What to Put on One

A chef card is a small printed card you hand to restaurant staff explaining what you cannot eat. It exists because saying it out loud does not survive the journey from your table to the kitchen. The server hears it, the ticket does not carry it, and the line cook never learns it.

A card survives that journey. It goes back with the order.

What belongs on it

Keep it to four things:

• A clear statement of the problem. “I have coeliac disease” or “I have a food allergy”. Not a paragraph about your symptoms.
• The specific things to avoid, named plainly. “Gluten” is clearer to a kitchen than “wheat, barley, rye, spelt, malt” — but naming the grains helps in kitchens that think gluten means bread.
• The cross-contact ask. This is the part most cards get wrong by leaving out. Clean surfaces, clean utensils, separate frying oil.
• A thank you. It costs one line and it changes how the card is received.

That is it. A card that fits in a hand gets read. A card that fills a page gets skimmed.

What to leave off

• Your medical history. Nobody in the kitchen is treating you.
• Severity scales. “Mild” invites a kitchen to take a shortcut. If it is on the card, it matters — that is the whole message.
• Long lists of safe foods. You are asking them to avoid something, not to design your meal.
• Anything in a font you would need to squint at. Kitchens are badly lit and busy.

The language problem

A perfect card in English is close to useless in a small restaurant in rural Spain or Croatia. The card has to be in the language of the person reading it, which is usually not the language you speak.

This is the single biggest failure point for travellers. A card in your own language reads as a polite note; a card in theirs reads as an instruction.

The cross-contact sentence matters more than the list

Most kitchens can leave an ingredient out. Far fewer will change the fryer oil, wipe the board, or swap tongs unless you ask directly. If your reaction is triggered by trace amounts, that sentence is doing more work than the allergen list above it.

Say it plainly: “Please use clean utensils, surfaces and frying oil when preparing my meal.”

Make one

We built a free allergy travel card generator — pick your allergens, type a name, choose the language of wherever you are, and print it at credit-card size so it fits a wallet. No signup, no app required.

It renders in 14 languages, so you can carry the same card in English at home and generate a Spanish one before a trip.

A card is not a guarantee

It is a communication tool, not a safety system. Kitchens make mistakes, staff change mid-shift, and “gluten-free” on a menu is not a certification. The card raises your odds; it does not remove the need to ask questions and judge the place you are in.

If you also want to check packaged food yourself, Allervibe scans barcodes against the allergens you have set — the same list that goes on your card.