Travelling with dietary restrictions is one of those things that sounds manageable until you’re actually doing it. You’ve booked the trip, you’re excited, and then somewhere between googling “gluten free restaurants in [destination]” and falling down a Reddit rabbit hole at midnight, the excitement quietly turns into dread.
If that’s where you are right now, this is the right place to start.
A quick note before we get into it: this site is built for people managing more than one restriction at once, gluten free and dairy free, halal and nut allergy, coeliac and lactose intolerant, and every other combination in between. If that’s you, you’ve probably already noticed that most travel advice out there covers one restriction and quietly ignores the rest. We don’t do that here, however the advice and tools still works for people managing one restriction.
The thing nobody tells you
Travelling with dietary restrictions isn’t harder than travelling without them. It’s just different. It requires a bit more preparation upfront, a bit more communication on the ground, and a slightly different approach to research. Once you’ve got those sorted, and they’re not complicated, the actual travelling part gets a lot easier.
The mistake most people make is trying to research everything from scratch for every trip. You don’t need to. You need a process, a handful of reliable tools, and the confidence to ask a few simple questions. That’s genuinely it.
Where to start
I recommend starting with How to Travel Safely with Food Allergies, Gluten free or other Dietary Restrictions. It is organised by level, so whether;
- You want to travel, you’re just not sure how to eat safely. Start here with safe travel planning.
- You travel, but you’ve been burnt before, and want to level up your travel skills so you can eat safely.
- You know the basics, you want less time researching, more time going further and not missing out.
You’ll find a section with guides and advice to help you achieve your travel goals.
The Complete Travel Planning Guide is a seven step process that walks you through everything, how to build a food-friendly itinerary, how to advocate for yourself in restaurants, what to pack, how to handle flights, and how to stay organised once you’re actually on the ground. It’s free, it works for any combination of restrictions, and it was built from years of travelling this way.
Once you’ve got the planning side sorted, the next thing worth having is an allergy card in the local language for wherever you’re headed. Not a vague translation, a card that names your specific restrictions, flags the hidden ingredients to watch for, and is actually usable in a restaurant when you hand it over. You can generate one for free here.
If you want to go deeper, destination-specific safety ratings, hidden risks, local food vocabulary, safe dishes to look for, and a personalised allergy card all in one place, that’s what the Essentials Travel Pack is for. It’s the tool I wish I’d had when I started travelling this way.
Once you’re ready to everything you’ve learnt into action where do you go? Where should you start with? Personally to me its about building confidence, so I recommend taking things slowly and in stages. Ask yourself these questions in order and when you can answer yes! I am, I reckon you’re ready to try the next stage:
- Are you confident eating out in a local restaurant? I’m thinking the kind of place where you can do a little research find a couple of suitable options and ask some questions and safely eat out
- Are you confident travelling to and eating out in a neighbouring city or town, one where you don’t know all the safe options? I recommend picking somewhere within your ocuntry but a couple of hours away, where you can do some research, ask your questions and start to put some of the learnings from the Complete Travel Planning Guide into practice. For me this was first Rotorua and then Queenstown.
- Are you confident travelling to and eating out eating out in a large city overseas? I recommend picking somewhere thats a city break destination for people from your part of the world where you can find information on safe places to eat and that is large enough to have variety. Perhaps even something you can’t get at home. For me this was Melbourne, I got to have dumplings and a kebab with pita bread!
- Are you confident travelling to and eating out eating out overseas for a week or so? For me this was my first trip to Japan where I went to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka and took day trips from these places and a great place to practice asking questions, using my allergy card and get used to ordering special meals.
- Are you confident travelling to and eating out eating out overseas and sandwiching some harder locations between your safe places? This is where you really build confidence and will be looking for naturally safe options as well as all the skills you learnt in previous steps, but its also a real confidence booster, just pack a backup backpacker meal for emergencies. For me this was my last trip to Japan where I stayed in Tokyo, Matsumoto, Nagano, Akakura Onsen and Kanazawa with day trips from each place.
From here you might have no desire to go further off the beaten path and thats great. If you are good luck and have fun exploring. If you need some advice or someone to chat to about it get in contact, I love talking travel.
One more thing
The anxiety does ease. Not because the restrictions change, but because you get better at navigating them, and because knowing what to look for and what to ask makes an enormous difference to how a trip actually feels. The first trip is the hardest, after that, it starts to feel like just part of how you travel.
You’ve already done the hardest bit, which is deciding you’re not going to let it stop you. Now let’s get you somewhere worth eating.
Ready to plan your first trip? Start with our start here page, we’ve organised everything by level in one place, ready to bookmark and return to
Jo is the founder of Globally Sauced, a travel platform for dietary restricted travellers and is gluten and dairy free. When not outdoors or travelling, she loves to empower people with dietary restrictions so they can explore the world safely.
Globally Sauced offers verified restaurant recommendations, country-specific guides, food label / menu translations, and more downloadable resources for gluten-free, dairy-free, allergy-conscious and other dietary restricted travellers. Learn more at globallysauced.com
