we will be coming to Kunming and yuangyang rice terrace for only 2 weeks,
but our son has life threatening allergies to peanuts, peanut oil, all nuts including walnuts, pine nuts, pecan, pistachios, almonds etc. Can you tell if the Kunming cuisine normally have nuts/peanuts? If my son eats this or have things touching it, he
will need to go hospital. and if you can forward any restaurants that are safe to eat?. greatly appreciate this!!
Some dishes have such nuts, and peanut oil is often used in cooking, but so are other oils. Should be easy to avoid the nuts, but, not having this problem, I'm not sure what it would take to avoid peanut oil - you may need to insist on an accurate answer at restaurants.
thank you. do you know how allergy aware most people are in the area?
This isn't like the West. Very few things are labeled allergy sensitive and even if they are, you'd be crazy to trust Chinese manufacturers to make anything gluten or peanut/nut free that wasn't cross processed somewhere which had gluten or nuts. As to restaurants, they sometimes don't even get an order to make a dish vegetarian correctly, so not sure I'd bet a child's life on the cook or oils here. Better bring a few epipens. There is very little awareness about peanut allergy, so noone will take any amount of regards to safety about cross contamination with nuts or blended peanut cooking oil.
thank you. We will be carrying a few sets of epi pens for sure! what about supermarkets where we can purchase our own foods and cook if we rented an apt with kitchen. 2 weeks of not trusting restaurant is a long time of worrying and anxiety. any other suggestions? very much appreciate this!
Hi there, I also live in Kunming and have life threatening nut allergies (pistachios and cashews). Unfortunately peanut oil is used widely, and some noodle dishes will be garnished with peanuts. It's probably a good idea to know the Chinese phrases to check, e.g. 我的儿子对花生过敏。
I would say that most people here are not familiar with this kind of life threatening allergy. Please be sure to bring lots of epi pens/benedryl and carry them with you at all times. Going to local hospitals for time sensitive allergy emergencies will be stressful, so it's better to carry these with you. In my experience many hospitals do not even carry the correct dosage of epinephrine for treating anaphylactic shock or know what this is.
As for safe restaurants, if there is a language barrier you may want to check out the western restaurants in the listings section of this website.
Hope that helps.
We have plenty of Western owned cafes and restaurants whom might be able to cater to you. BUT you'd have to be sure the owners are in, as again, local staff just wouldn't be able to keep in mind the 100% no cross contamination with nuts or blended oil. As to cooking, you can buy fresh produce and meat in local markets. I would go to Carrefour and try to find an imported olive oil you trust. Or bring your own cooking oil.
There are locally available cooking oils without peanut oil in them, and there are several convenient places to buy olive oil, mostly imported from Italy - certainly no need to bring your own oil from some other country.
I wonder what the prevalence of nut allergies is in China, or Yunnan, vis-a-vis in other areas - I know nothing about this, but it seems to me it may be at least partially genetic. Anybody know?
DO NOT USE THE LOCAL COOKING OIL. Yes, we have local corn, rapeseed, and canola oils, but there will be no regards as to whether they processed soy or peanuts on the same line.
@ Alex: Is there any evidence of peanut oil in what is branded as corn, rapeseed or canola oil? I would imagine there may have been a phony brand or two discovered at some point, and I know about the gutter-oil thing, but I doubt that most Chinese-produced cooking oils are so corrupted. There seem to be quite a few brands of cooking oil - of course you can suspect anything, but which ones are actually suspicious?
