“Hel­lo, my name is Jeff, I’ll be your serv­er today.”

“Hi, Jeff. My wife has an aller­gy to gar­lic, can you tell me what’s safe for her to eat?”

“Gee, I’ll have to check with the kitchen, what are you inter­est­ed in?”

“Can you check on today’s soup, on the fish, on the chick­en and on today’s special?”

A few min­utes later.

“OK, there’s gar­lic in all of those, and in all the oth­er fish, beef and chick­en entrees. The chef sug­gests a salad–without dressing.”

The above is an amal­gam of con­ver­sa­tions I’ve had at dozens of restau­rants over the years. Most of the time, the wait staff does­n’t know what foods have gar­lic, far too often the kitchen staff does­n’t know either, or their knowl­edge is faulty. One restau­rant, which we had called the night before to alert them to the ques­tion, said a par­tic­u­lar dish was gar­lic free, though the list of ingre­di­ents in the sauce includ­ed ranch dress­ing. Ranch dress­ing has gar­lic in it.

Here’s a short list of foods my wife can­not safe­ly order:

Piz­za, bar­be­cued ribs, Steak Diane, almost any­thing ‘Ital­ian’, tuna fish, mac­a­roni and cheese.

Wait a minute, mac­a­roni and cheese, tuna fish??

Yes, near­ly all ‘fan­cy’ restau­rant ver­sions of mac­a­roni and cheese include gar­lic. Why? It’s so unnecessary!

As to the tuna fish, we con­tact­ed StarK­ist some years ago, they informed us that their tuna in water includes veg­etable stock, and they were not sure whether there was gar­lic in the stock they get from some of their suppliers.

‘Amer­i­can­ized’ Ital­ian foods near­ly always have gar­lic in them. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, when we were in Turin, Italy, we had very lit­tle trou­ble find­ing dish­es with no gar­lic in them. In one very nice neigh­bor­hood restau­rant, there was just one dish on the entire menu that was­n’t safe. We learned from a friend­ly wait­er at anoth­er restau­rant (the only per­son in the build­ing who spoke any Eng­lish), that gar­lic is sel­dom used in north­ern Ital­ian cook­ing, and nev­er in piz­za. (That restau­rant, total­ly invis­i­ble until they raise up the steel cur­tain cov­er­ing the front at 4pm, was one of the busiest piz­za places I’ve ever seen, over the course of a two-hour meal we must have seen at least 200 piz­zas go out the door.)

We were in Ottawa, Cana­da, a few years ago and walked past a Ital­ian restau­rant (Vit­to­ria Trat­to­ria) with a beau­ti­ful brick wood-fired piz­za oven. We went in and asked the host­ess if they used gar­lic in their piz­zas. She checked, and, lo and behold, they make their own sauce, from fresh tomatoes–and noth­ing else! It was one of the best piz­zas we’ve had in decades. We ate at that restau­rant a total of three times that week. The host­ess and chef both expressed sur­prise when we explained the dif­fi­cul­ties we had in the States. The host­ess said her father, who learned to cook in Italy years ago, almost nev­er used garlic.

If you research the his­to­ry of alfre­do sauce, it was orig­i­nal­ly made just from Parme­san cheese, care­ful­ly melt­ed so it does­n’t cur­dle. Adding heavy cream both speeds the process up and helps pre­vent cur­dling, and cream is a lot less expen­sive than Parme­san Reg­giano. (Don’t try mak­ing it with whole milk, it’ll cur­dle in sec­onds!) But near­ly every restau­rant we’ve been to uses gar­lic in their alfre­do sauce. Again, why? It cov­ers up the fla­vor of the cheese, and it’s not his­tor­i­cal­ly accurate.

I’ve made my own alfre­do sauce a few times, it’s a sim­ple sauce, but I’m told Ital­ian chefs often use it as a test when hir­ing assis­tants. Some­times it’s the sim­ple things that are the hard­est to get just right.

Anoth­er restau­rant we vis­it­ed had a deli­cious sound­ing appe­tiz­er on the menu, a five cheese bruschet­ta. When it came, you could smell the gar­lic from across the room! Worse yet, I tried a piece, and the gar­lic com­plete­ly cov­ered up the taste of the five cheeses. After talk­ing to the wait­er, and then to the chef, we got one that had no gar­lic in it. I sug­gest­ed the chef taste it, it was such an improve­ment over the gar­lic-laden one, you could actu­al­ly taste the inter­play of the five cheeses.

The U. S. gov­ern­ment does­n’t keep sta­tis­tics on gar­lic aller­gies, but based on con­ver­sa­tions we’ve had with friends, I would spec­u­late that 2–3 per­cent of peo­ple have some kind of gar­lic aller­gy or, per­haps more accu­rate­ly, a gar­lic sen­si­tiv­i­ty. In my wife’s case, she inher­it­ed it from her father. In both cas­es, it was an allergy/sensitivity that showed up when they were in their 40’s.

From what I’ve read, it appears that what gar­lic does, and why it is con­sid­ered healthy, is to slow down your diges­tive process. In my wife’s case, it brings it to a near halt, some­times for up to 18 hours. Hav­ing a full feel­ing after a deli­cious meal is pleas­ant, hav­ing it until the fol­low­ing morn­ing is not.

Your home­work assign­ment for today is to pick up all the cans of pas­ta or piz­za sauce at the gro­cery store and check the ingre­di­ents for gar­lic, which, for­tu­nate­ly, is an ingre­di­ent they’re required to list. Here’s a shout out to the folks at Hunts, who make two pas­ta sauces, tra­di­tion­al and mush­room, that don’t include garlic.

For those occa­sions when I want to make a lot of sauce (like for a big tray of lasagna), here’s my own gar­lic-free mari­nara sauce recipe, I think you’ll find that gar­lic isn’t nec­es­sary here, either.

Mari­nara Sauce

1 medi­um to large yel­low onion, diced

3 table­spoons of but­ter or canola oil

2 table­spoons sugar

A num­ber 10 can of diced toma­toes (if using fresh toma­toes, you’ll need around 8 pounds of them, peeled, juiced and seed­ed; be sure to remove the seeds, not only do they get stuck in your teeth, they’re bitter)

2 table­spoons toma­to paste (the kind in the tubes is the best)

2 table­spoons dried basil

1 table­spoon dried oregano

¹⁄₂ tea­spoon ground marjoram

4 bay leaves

¹⁄₂ tea­spoon thyme

Salt to taste (I don’t both­er adding any myself)

Cook the onions in the butter/oil until trans­par­ent. If a few turn brown on the edges, that’s fine, I think it adds flavor.

Add all the ingre­di­ents except the basil and cook on a medi­um heat for about 45 min­utes. Add the basil towards the end, it los­es poten­cy if cooked too long. Remove the bay leaf, then blend to pro­duce a smooth sauce. A stick or immer­sion blender is the per­fect tool for this, I rec­om­mend the Bamix, not only did they invent the stick blender, they per­fect­ed it.
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2024 Update: I have cre­at­ed a sub­red­dit for peo­ple who want or need to cook or eat meals with­out gar­lic in them. See https://www.reddit.com/r/CookingWithoutGarlic/

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