Big Cedar Lodge may conjure visions of hunting and wild animals. But that doesn’t mean its eateries can’t cater to patrons who don’t eat animal products or are perhaps allergic to certain ingredients in flower
In a recent interview with The Scoop, Bryan Murrell, a baker at the lodge, talked about how he and his staff work to meet the needs of patrons with special food needs.
What is it you do exactly?
Most of my requirements there [Big Cedar] are to prep food, prep muffins, pies, and cakes for the day shift and the night shift, and make icing, pies, cakes, cookies — just normal things you’d see in a bakery.
When people come in with special dietary needs, you’re the guy to make sure those people don’t eat something they don’t want to eat?
Yes, we try to accommodate anybody that we can as far as being able to work around their food allergies. Even if it’s for a diet or anything like that, we try to accommodate the customers as well as we can.
For people who are vegans, what do you use in place of eggs and dairy products?
They make a vegan egg substitute. As far as milk, you have almond milk and soy milk. There’s plenty of ways around for vegans as far as the milk options go. As far as your eggs go, it’s pretty cut and dry. You have just an egg substitute that has no animal by-products in it.
Gluten has become quite a popular thing, in terms of trying to avoid it. Do you have a few people that come in and request to substitute gluten?
Actually, there’s quite a lot of people who come in, and we do our best to accommodate the person(s). Even though they may not have celiac, we try to use sorghum flour, rice flour, and almond flour. We have plenty of different flours that we can use to get around the whole gluten issue. I know a lot of people like doing it now, just as a diet and things like that. We try to help out as much as we possibly can to do whatever they decide they need to do.
Big Cedar Lodge is a fairly popular destination for tourists. How often would you say that people come in and ask for special treatment?
Well, usually in every group that we do, there will at least be one or two people that have some sort of food allergy. And usually out of every two or three groups that we do, we’ll have somebody that will have either a gluten allergy or request that we do not use gluten in their meal. Whether it’s hot food or baked goods, it’s quite common now.
Whenever it does happen, would you say that you prefer that people call ahead?
Absolutely, because normally we are baking regular products, so if we have to accommodate a gluten-free person, we want to keep it as safe as we possibly can. Since we use so much flour, we want to make sure everything is wiped down, everything’s clean, everything’s sterile and sanitized, so there can be no cross-contamination from regular wheat flour.
