The Chef’s Table: Culinary Advice for Food Allergy Safety Chef Ming Tsai

In honor of Food Allergy Awareness Week, we’re stepping out of the clinic and into the heat of the kitchen. Chef Ming Tsai shares an insider’s look at restaurant safety protocols, food allergy legislation and practical strategies physicians need to help patients with food allergies navigate the world with confidence.

Find out more about food allergies. 

Transcript

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 0:11

Welcome to the podcast of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. I'm your host, Dr. Rebecca Staff. Allergy and Immunology is a field that's evolving at an incredible pace, and staying current isn't just important, it's essential. This podcast brings you conversations with leading experts to explore the latest advances, challenge how we think about core topics, and ultimately help us deliver the best care to our patients. Today we welcome Chef Ming Tsai. Chef Ming is the host of the show, Simply Ming, and an author of five cookbooks. He founded the award-winning restaurant Blue Dragon in Massachusetts and BaBa at the Yellowstone Club. He appeared in the Food Network Cooking Competition, the next iron chef, where he defeated Chef Bobby Flay. Chef Ming is also an incredible advocate for food allergy awareness and has served as national spokesman for the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network. I'm excited to chat with him today about his work as a chef and his work in food allergy advocacy.

Chef Ming Tsai 1:02

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 1:04

What drew you to your career as a chef and how did your culinary path evolve over time?

Chef Ming Tsai 1:10

How did my culinary path evolve over time? Is that the question?

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 1:14

Yeah, well, you started as kind of a chef, but now you've kind of developed this whole line of food and been on multiple TV shows. How did that kind of evolve?

Chef Ming Tsai 1:21

Yeah, it's just it was very organic. I mean, I've been a chef for 45, 46 years. And honestly, it was always just about cooking, making people happy through food. And that's still fortunately my job today. That's why I can speak for every chef. I think that's the reason we're all chefs, right? There's also the nurturing part in helping people too, if you go all the way to like a Jose Andres rural central kitchen. But in general, we cook to make people happy, um, including ourselves. There's nothing more rewarding than literally seeing someone smile or seeing an empty plate or having someone say, I was so pissed off and bad before I came here. I'm now happy later when I leave, vice versa. The everything else, um back in the 90s, like 95, 94, that's when Food Network was just starting. And they they didn't have, they literally had Emerald, Bobby, Mario, Sarah. That was it. They were just starting to get talent. And they had a show called Dining Around, Nina Griskam and Alan Richmond. And dining around was three chefs for half an hour to show off a chef in their restaurant. Turned out it was their secret talent search show, too. They were actually going out to see if there's any chefs that were decent on camera. And the answer was no, none of us were good on camera. We all sucked, to be honest. We were chefs. But some of us had a personality that was more confident, shall we say, than others. And I was one of them. And I'm kind of a smart ass. So I remember the first thing I ever said on TV. Uh, this is in Santa Fe, the camera's rolling. I'm looking into camera, and I said, Hi, I'm Chef Ming Tsai. I was born Chinese, I'm still Chinese, and today we're cooking lamb. And it was not that funny, but the producer chuckled, and the producer thought, well, this guy's enough confidence to try to make a joke. Maybe this guy has something, and they liked the clip, and because of that clip, I came back and did Ready Said Cook, a five-part series, and cooked and competed. And because of that went well, I then did cooking. Uh I guess Sarah Moulton did cooking live. That's a live cooking show, which was great. And I got some hits from that from my previous shows. And then I took over her show one week. She was on vacation. And then from that week, the same producer, Marilyn O'Reilly, basically said, You're you have you have it, you have presence, you should uh you should get media training. Um, I have the guy, he's in Western Mass, this guy, Lou Eckis, who I believe is still doing this, and he trained Mario and Bobby and Emerald and all of us. And uh nothing, no rocket science, but just how you how you do cooking on TV. You never say the magic power of the TV or the magic microwave. You just put the lamb in the oven and you say seamlessly, and after 45 minutes, look how beautiful the crust is on the lamb. And you just pull it right out. And to the viewer, they don't think, oh my god, it takes too long to do this. To the viewers, like, oh my god, that was so easy. And tricks like that. And fortunately, I was decent at it, right? I liked teaching. I have always taught my entire life, and I still like teaching. And since I have the passion to teach, it was just a matter of doing it to cameras. And uh it took a, you know, it took a little bit to get used to it, but uh, you know, after a while, after you can see the final product, you realize that this is actually quite cool. I can touch a lot of people rather than the 150 people at lunch and the 300 people at dinner. I could touch thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands uh with just one show. And so that's how that all started. And you know, Fruit and I was young and they played us all the time, three times a day, seven days a week. Um, by some miracle, that that same year, 98, is when I show launched, my first book launched, my restaurant opened. So '98 was a big year for me. And so Blue Ginger fortunately got tons of accolades on its own before my show aired. So I'm very proud that Blue Ginger got its three stars and got everything through uh through just the food and service of Blue Ginger. What TV did for me, however, is it uh it gave me a huge advantage. Everyone that was visiting Boston, because the power of TV is so irrational, people would think, oh, he must be a fantastic chef. We have to go to Blue Ginger. And so what it did afford me is I would get everyone one time. People traveling from wherever in the country would come drive to Wellesley, which is you know 12 miles from Boston. It's not just down the road. Uh, but you still have to perform. It does not guarantee success. What it did help me is I got everyone one time. If we performed and still did great food, great service at a reasonable price, you would have a customer for life. Um, so the advantage was at least I got to try them once. And fortunately, with my team and everyone I had surrounding me, were really talented and very, very focused, like I was on providing great food and service. And that's kind of how it started. Then it kind of catapulted because that same year I remarkably won Food Network's first Emmy. Um they had not had an Emmy, and so I won Service Show host for East Meets West. And they told me later that they actually submitted my first show. The first episode of first season, my first show ever I ever did is the one they submitted because they said it was the freshest. And I was amazed. I I laughed at my uh agent. I'm like, well, it's great to be nominated because it was with Julia, Martha, Bob Viola, and Science Sky, Brian Nye. So I'm like, oh, it's great to be nominated. Um, no, didn't think it had a chance in hell to win. And I joke, I think they had an Asian quota or something. They needed to bring an Asian into the thing, and so I became one of the first Asian, certainly the first Asian chef to win an Emmy. And uh, and that just catapulted me to the next level. So, you know, I'm still a restaurant chef. That's still that's still my love. Um, but from that, there's obviously lots of things you can do when you're on TV and you're cooking, and that's pots and pans and knives and da-da-da, and food. You know, I did HSN for six years, which I loved. HSN is a great way to get great product out to people. And uh now my current line is with Nestle. It's a bunch of noodles called Mings, and that's out that's out around the country. And I have a new relationship coming down the pike, which I can't talk about with the new pots and pans line, which is I'm very excited about. Um, but I'm very lucky. I've been very blessed that I've had a platform to be able to promote whatever I want to do. And then, of course, we're gonna get to food allergies because that's that was a huge part of blue ginger, to be honest, a huge part of my career. And it's just, I mean, for the basic reason, every every American deserves the right to eat safely in any restaurant in America, period.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 8:14

Well, what led to your interest in food allergies? What got you started there?

Chef Ming Tsai 8:19

It's very well documented, but my son, first son, Dave, was born with life-threatening food allergies, the soy, wheat, dairy, shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts and eggs. Seven of the eight. And he was quite lucky that his father was a chef. So you can't feel bad for David because he ate organic New Zealand lamb rack with rice noodles, Alaskan lime called halibut with fried rice. Uh, Asian food is easy to do, gluten-free, right? You just use tamari instead of soy sauce, and you use rice. So it was not, I wasn't substituting anything for him. He just had a life-threatening food allergies, and I just cooked for him. So he did great. Uh, not every son and daughter has a chef that cooks Asian as their dad. And honestly, he had horrible eczema as an infant, so that's how we knew we tested him. He had all these allergies. And I think he was well, he might have been four or five years old. No, actually, he was less than that. He was probably four years old. I walked into a restaurant, not to be named here, in the western suburbs of Framingham. And I went to the guy dressed up doing nothing. That would be the manager. So I went to the manager and I'm like, hey, listen, this is my son. He has these allergies. Uh, we like look at your menu. We like to have uh, could we get your turkey with lettuce and da-da-da? And he looked at me and he said, you know what, we'd rather not serve you. And I looked at him with uh, and I'm not a violent person, but if I was, I would have smacked him. I'm like, you can't say that, dude. This is America. And we walked out, and that infuriated me so much. Because it used to be the color of your skin prevented you from eating in a restaurant. Then it used to be if you're in a wheelchair, you couldn't get into a restaurant. Now, if you have a food allergy, you're not gonna be served. That is called discrimination. And I never, uh I still the restaurant's still there. I I should probably go by and I thought about that after this interview. I should go by and thank them because of your idiotic behavior. I got to pass a law. So I actually may go by and thank them. But I was infuriated. I'm like, you can't say that to my child. And they was like, Well, dad, why can't we eat there? Why can't we eat there? And I, you know, it was just one of those moments that that was my first epiphany. With that timing, then Senator Cream reached out to me. So Senator Cream, Cynthia Cream, um, obviously I'm in Massachusetts, she reached out and she, I don't know if she knew I had some of the food out. She must have, because she's like, look, I have an opportunity. I think we should together pass the first law to make restaurants safer for everyone in America. I'm like, I'm absolutely all in for that. And so, as was my son. And so he came with me, he testified at the state house, we're all there, and then and with literally, I mean, I wish we could pass everything through government like this. No one pushed back. Uh, very few push back. I mean, there's no reason to push back. It's like, it's it's just like if you've been touched by cancer, you get it. If you've been touched by food allergies, you get it. And so that law was passed. I'm very proud. I mean, I I spent a lot of time, lots of meetings with lots of people, wrote the whole the blurb, right? If you have life-threatening food allergies, notify your server when ordering. So that's now very proud on every menu in America, including fast food, right? There's they have it. And um, and then I created what we call the Bible. It's really the food allergy reference manual. I think that's the official name now. And that is really a tool for all restaurant chefs and owners and managers to have in their restaurant. Because I don't care where you went to college or grad school, whatever, during the heat of a 7:30 Saturday night busy restaurant, you cannot remember everything in your food. You just can't. No one's that smart. And so you need a reference tool. You need to double check because this is someone's life. It's just they may get sick or they may die. So you can't take this lightly. You can't be like, oh, they don't like lettuce. No, no, no, no. They eat peanuts, they die. So it's that serious because there's nothing more serious than death. And um, so we passed this law and and we made this food allergy manual, this Bible, to make it much easier for restaurants. Because you can't you can't say no on a Saturday night. You still have to serve that allergic person. But you can't shut down your line because if you don't have a system in place, your service is ruined. Two allergy tables can just completely destroy your service. So now everyone else who don't give a flying hoot about the two kids with food allergies, the two adults, they just want their steak and their fish hot. They have a bad meal because you didn't have a system in place because you were dealing with food allergy. I applaud the person to take it seriously dealing with the person with food allergy, but you'll be out of business in three months if you can't deal with people with food allergies. And hence, hence, you need a system in place. And this is I still use it. I use it in my restaurant, BaBa, in Montana. And I actually I have full reign of that restaurant, so that's a completely nut-free restaurant for my doing. And it's just amazing. All the members that have kids of people with nut allergies, every single one of them are just they're so thankful. They're so grateful. They're like, look, we never thought we could eat Asian food. We've never eaten Thai food before. We don't, you know, because it's hard. It's hard to go to a Chinatown restaurant. I'm Chinese, it's not a racist thing. It's just hard going to a small mom and pop restaurant that uses peanut oil everywhere if you have a peanut allergy. I I would tell the father and mother with the kids with peanut allergies, don't go to Chinatown. It's not worth the risk, right? Some restaurants do it well and some don't. And you know, if language is a barrier or if it's a smaller restaurant, they're not going to have the same systems in place as more established restaurants.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 13:47

And how does a how does a restaurant do that? How do they serve these patients with severe food allergies well while still maintaining, you know, kind of quick. I just said it.

Chef Ming Tsai 13:58

You need you need the Bible. You need the Bible. You have to have the Bible. When someone says chef, they want to eat the butterfish, they have a gluten allergy and sesame allergy. I'm like, all right, we go to the Bible, we see everything because it's eight boxes, and now nine because sesame is the ninth box, and you see what's checked off. But the Bible is so key because it's not a recipe. It's everything, it's growth, it's everything's broken down by process. Meaning, here's the fish and it's marinated. Here's sauce one, here's sauce two, here's the rice, here's the salad, and here's that. So everything has its own components. So we find out that they can actually eat the butterfish because the soy meats are marinated, but the sesame is in the wakame salad. So they can eat this without the wakame salad. And our soy syrup has gluten, so they can't eat the soy syrup, but here we have our gluten-free soy syrup that we make specially. So they need the special soy syrup and no wakame salad, so we'll give them a frise salad instead. That took 17 seconds. That's how you do it. But if you don't have the Bible, you're screwed.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 15:00

No, that's right.

Chef Ming Tsai 15:01

Because you ask, you asked your partner, you asked your cook, sous chef is off. Oh, Pedro made the chili. I don't know. There's so many reasons why people don't know. It was the first episode of the bear. The first episode of the bear, they had a peanut allergy, right? They served someone wrong, and I I kind of chuckled a little bit that they actually put allergies in the forefront. I should have been. I actually, you guys and all allergy should have jumped on that bigger. Because that was a huge hundreds and millions of people saw that episode on food allergies. That would have that was a great opportunity for all you guys to take that clip and play it and play it and play it. What to do, what not to do. They didn't have a Bible, they needed a Bible.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 15:42

Yeah. And cooking with food allergies can feel so limiting, you know. I think both for maybe chefs and certainly in the home. What are ways that you approach creatively creating meals that have that are allergy safe that for patients with multiple food allergies? Sounds like you did that for your son.

Chef Ming Tsai 15:59

Yeah, see, I push back. I don't think food allergies are limiting. I think food allergies is like any chef, it's like iron chef. Here are your seven ingredients you can cook with cook. That now, I understand I'm a chef, and a lot of people are not chefs. So it's easier for me to say that. But that is true though. I don't, again, like I said, in Asian cuisine, there's no, you can easily do gluten-free, you can easily do you know, peanut-free, you can easily do all of it. And uh, and that, and this is this gets into the psyche of psycho moms and psycho-dads that are too protective and too careful and create children that have become so paranoid they need more than one therapist. So I will say, and I'm not joking about this, there are parents that are so psycho and so protective. I get it, I understand why they don't want the child to die. I don't want my children to die either. I understand the the initiative, I understand why they think that way, but they make the child, I've seen these children so paranoid they won't even sit down in the dining room table. They're like, is there so I hear that and the kids are whacked out because that. But it's usually more mom than dad, because moms tend to be with the kids more than dads. I've seen these psycho moms, I pull them aside, I says, listen, you're I'm not I'm not a psychiatrist or whatnot, but your kid is so scared of eating any food, and and bluntly it's coming from you. So you need to pull back, otherwise, your kid's never gonna have a normal life, which is a really hard thing to say to a stranger. But I see it, and I'm trying to feed them safely, and I just and I and a lot of people don't get offended by that. They're like, I know, I know, but I don't understand. I've had the same situation, but you have to pull back, otherwise, and you know, so these kids now have eating disorders and psychological disorders. It's just a food allergy. So don't make the food allergies such a big deal. I get it, it's life and death, but treat it normally. You can't, I I just just don't eat peanut butter and peanuts. You're allergic to peanuts. And be careful, which is calling the restaurant. So easy. Before you go to any restaurant and you have a kid or yourself a food allergies, call the restaurant. Ask to speak to the manager or the chef, not the hostess, not the dad, and say, hey, listen, my son has these food allergies. Can we eat safely there? And based on the tone of voice, you can tell, oh God, I don't really, yeah, that's gonna be, yeah, oh, you you should be fine. You don't go there. We have an incredible allergy policy in place, like Disney. Disney has an incredible, we have an incredible allergy policy. The executive chef comes out, da da da da da da. You go there. Period. Don't don't be an idiot. Don't walk into a neighborhood if they don't like you. Don't go there, right? Be smart. You gotta be smart. You can't just, you can't, and you can't be entitled. Don't expect you to walk into a restaurant. My son has all these food allergies. I need food perfectly cooked and safe now. No way, you're gonna get your son sick.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 18:44

Cannot be I tell my patients the same thing that you can really tell how people respond when you tell them you have food allergies, and that kind of they they you know right away whether you'll hostesses roll their eyes.

Chef Ming Tsai 18:55

Oh god, another peanut allergy allergy, and they roll their eyes, and you're you just you just turn around and you leave. You're like, I'm not gonna work with this 19-year-old hostess that could kill my son. Sorry, right? And you should have done it everything else in advance, which is looking at the menu, da-da-da-da, speaking to someone. It does take extra work, but your kid has food allergies or you have food allergies, so then you don't want to die. So you have to do the extra work. It's it's not, it shouldn't be considered a work. It's just, you know, I mean, if you're kosher and you can't eat pork and shrimp, right? And you have to eat halal meat, you're going to call, right? You're not just going to show up and demand, I'm kosher. I need like this is a pork barbecue restaurant, not a great place for you, right? It's just right. That person didn't do the research. Why would you go eat pork if you're a kosher? You don't.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 19:45

So if you're a home chef and you're having someone to your house with food allergies and you really want to, you know, protect them but also serve them excellent food. Do you have recommendations for where people would look for resources or what they could think about cooking?

Chef Ming Tsai 19:58

Yeah, hire me. Just from two Bitcoin, I will show up anywhere in the world. The best yeah, I mean bluntly, no. My resource is my brain, right? I just cook. So I I don't I don't go to any resource. Um, I do will, I mean, I research stuff like gluten-free flowers, right? Thomas Keller and all these companies, Bob, Bob's Red Mill, they make gluten-free flowers. So there's there is stuff like that. So I'll research products. The cool, you know, of course, tomari soy is a gluten-free soy sauce that's been out there forever. Um, but there's fish sauce with wheat gluten, and there's fish sauce without wheat gluten. You know, so you gotta look at your sauces. So that research I do because that's how usually people get sick is it's in a pre-made sauce, and it's happened to me, a blue ginger. You should check the label your sauces regularly, because sometimes manufacturers change it and add wheat gluten, and they don't have a legal right to have to tell you because they don't know who buys their sauce, right? So, so you need to be so you should be reading labels all the time. I do the opposite. If I have a company coming over and there's a child with you know seven allergies, I ask the parents, what does your kid like to eat? Or ask the adult, what what do you like to eat? And I go from there. Oh, I uh my son, my son loves steak. Okay, and so it's does he like rice or potatoes? He's gluten free. Let's say he's gluten-free. So no pasta, no nuts. Oh, he loves potatoes. Well, you're you're halfway there. And that just start the pan, whatever you're cooking with, garlic and ginger, and you'll be there. Right? My kids, when they were young, and of course they loved everything that every kid loves, but they really loved my vegetables. They loved kale, broccoli, broccolini, cabbage, because every time I started my walk, it was garlic and ginger. So that smell of garlic and ginger in a walk sends kids running on the staircase, like, kale, broccolini. I mean, they love veg more than as much as they love meat. But that's because it was flavorful. I went to Andover where they boiled broccoli until it was so soft you could do with a spoon. And I didn't like broccoli for the longest time until I had it in a Chinese restaurant. And I'm like, oh, broccoli is really good when it's cooked like this. So yeah, I think it's important just to figure out because you're not, presuming the normal person at home is not a chef, you're not going to wow them with a creation you created yourself. So what you want to do is make sure the kid eats safely and make what the kid likes. And it's not that hard. I mean, most kids, if you cook their protein they like to eat, they're happy as a clam.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 22:39

Do your kids cook?

Chef Ming Tsai 22:41

They both do cook, yeah. They're quite good. Henry worked for me for a year during COVID at BaBa. He's a really good cook. Neither want to be a chef. Um, I I don't I didn't persuade them. I probably more dissuaded them than persuade, which may sound a little bit weird, but it's a hard career. And and I I lucked out, like you heard my history. I kind of, as I opened, I got a TV show, and that just doesn't happen to most chefs. And so we had automatic business. I mean, we were profitable after the first month, which doesn't happen for restaurants. So I was an anomaly and I knew that. And honestly, being my son, there's going to be extra eyes, but but I am jealous. I was just cooking in the Cayman Islands with Emerald, who's one of my buddies, and his son EJ. EJ's 22 years old and has two Michelin Stars. So I'm so jealous and envious of that. I'm like, oh my God, one of my sons could have been, you know. But, you know, to each his own, my kids are happy and healthy. That's all that really matters. And yes, they can cook uh for themselves. And that's all that matters.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 23:45

Now you've done this incredible thing in getting this the food allergy labels in restaurants and the passage of the food safety bill. Are there other changes in restaurants you'd like to see to help make food allergy patients have even safer and um delicious eating experiences?

Chef Ming Tsai 24:01

Ah, interesting. So I have a very, you know, I have a very unique perspective because I'm a restaurant owner chef and I'm a father of a food allergy son. So I think it'd be very helpful to restaurants. Uh, and I've been given to it before. There's some some people with lots of food allergies print cards up. They print a business card, right? And I've seen them, I've used them. We went to Japan with our kids when they were really young, and I got them printed in Japanese, right? You can get your you can get these allergy cards printed in every language where you're traveling. And that's really important, like in Japan. And these cards said this person will die if he touches anything to deal with peanuts, any oil, any cause containment, right? It's very uh blunt. Um, but you need to be blunt, right? It's food allergies. So the more information a restaurant has in advance, the better your experience is going to be. So nowadays, like I said, speak to the manager or speak to the chef, text or email your card. Have it, you should have it in a PDF. If you have food allergies, you should have everything you have, right? And you should and be very specific. Let's say, look, I'm soy wheat, dairy, and shellfish. And then there's a term we use as fry okay. Let's talk about cross-contamination. What a chef in restaurant really needs to know is can you eat French fries out of a fryer that just fried shrimp? Because if the answer is no, then you have a life-threatening cross-contact food allergy. So you can't even touch the fryers because there's molecules of shrimp in the fryers. More times than not, over 50%. No, no, no, I can eat the french fries, fine. I just can't eat shrimp. Because the amount of hoops you have to jump through if it's fried, not okay, that means a new cutting board, new gloves, new tongs, new knife, new everything, because you can't have a shrimp molecule touch this plate. That's a much different way for the kitchen than if cross contact is okay. We have a steamer, for example. We steam lobster shuma in there. So there's lobster molecules in the steaming water. We put bowels in there to steam our bowels for the peeking duck. You can't eat those bowels if you have a life-threatening cross-contact shellfish allergy. But most, I'm gonna say most, I would say eight out of ten are not like eight out of ten of cross-contact, usually is okay. They actually have to eat the shrimp. Did are for peanuts, did they for that. So again, the more information I'm allergic to these four things, and cross contact's okay, or cross contact is not okay, I can't eat a molecule. Celiacs can't eat a molecule. So you have to treat them like wheat, wheat not okay, cross contact not okay. And and so we treat celiac just like uh wheat allergy, but probably not okay. So the more information you give in advance, so a day before you show up to Eli's, call them and say, Are you going to be there tomorrow? Yeah, my name's Janice. I'm the general manager, I'll be there tomorrow. That's fantastic. So then you walk in. Uh, is Janice here? I'm Janice. You you already feel better, your kid already is feeling better, you they all know about your special needs. It's what Disney does. When you check into Disney, I don't know if you've ever been to Disney, their computer system, they have their own open table system, right? They've had their own computer system since day one. As soon as you enter your son, David Sai, in their computer, every restaurant at Disney knows his exact allergies, right? It's amazing. And you sit down, the executive chef, and these restaurants are 400 seats. The executive chef comes to your table with a pad and paper, says, son, who has the allergies? David's like, that's me. Son, what do you like to eat? Oh, I love chicken, I love fresh, I love that. I got you covered. That chef actually makes that dish and brings it back. That's by far the best way to do it. Most restaurants don't have that much staff and have an executive chef be able to walk around and do just that. So they make it a priority. And they're amazing.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 27:58

They are incredible. Yeah, they're about and then I've just last question where you have a lot of physicians as an audience, what are some things you would like physicians to know as they advise their food allergy patients? So there are specific things that we should always make sure that as a chef, you think it would be good. Sounds like making sure we contact the restaurant ahead of time, have your food allergies very clearly on a card or translate it if you're traveling. Are there other things that you would advise us to kind of in giving advice to our patients, both as a dad with kid with food allergies and as a chef?

Chef Ming Tsai 28:31

Yes, get cured. We'll we'll end this interview with hope because there is hope.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 28:37

Yeah, that's wonderful.

Chef Ming Tsai 28:39

Yep.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 28:40

Thanks so much. I really appreciate you coming on and I thank you for being such an advocate for people with food allergies.

Chef Ming Tsai 28:46

Okay. Nice chatting.

Rebecca Saff, MD, PhD, FAAAAI 28:48

We hope you enjoyed listening to today's episode. Please visit aaaai.org for show notes and any pertinent links from today's conversation. If you like the show, please take a moment to rate and subscribe through wherever you download your podcast. As a reminder, this podcast is not intended to provide any individual medical advice to our listeners. We do hope that our conversations provide evidence-based information. Any questions pertaining to one's own health should always be discussed with our personal physician. The Find an Allergist search engine on the Academy website is a useful tool to locate a listing of board certified allergists in your area. Use of this audio program is subject to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology terms of use, which you can find at aa aai.org. Thank you again for listening.