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Fourteen allergens, in bold
Since 2014 EU rules have required fourteen named allergens to be declared on packaged food and, crucially, on restaurant menus too — gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soy, milk, tree nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulfites, lupin and molluscs. On a German menu these usually appear as small superscript letters or numbers beside each dish, with the key printed at the bottom of the page or on a separate sheet the staff will bring if you ask. It looks like bureaucracy and it is genuinely useful. Restaurant staff are trained on it, and asking is routine rather than awkward. Germany is also unusually good ground for restricted diets more broadly: it has one of the largest vegan markets in Europe, Berlin especially, and even a small-town supermarket will have a shelf of laktosefrei and glutenfrei products. The Reformhaus, a health-food shop format dating from the 1880s, and the more modern Bioladen are both worth knowing about. One warning: Germans treat a stated dietary restriction as a fact to be accommodated, not an opinion to be discussed, so say it plainly and expect to be believed.