No Private Dining Inquiry Form Asks About Allergies. Raise Them Anyway.

Every private dining inquiry form asks for your headcount, your date, your start and end time, and how you heard about the venue. Across five Manhattan venues checked in September 2026, not one asks whether anyone at your event cannot eat something. The only place to put it is the last field on the form — “is there any additional information you would like to add?” — which is also where people put parking questions.

That is a structural problem for a planner, not a hospitality one. These kitchens will almost certainly look after your guest. But the process is built so that dietary needs surface late, usually after the contract is signed, and late is where the expensive version of this conversation lives.

At a Glance

Of six Manhattan venues whose private dining pages were checked, exactly one publishes a commitment to accommodate dietary restrictions: Gramercy Tavern. One more, Union Square Cafe, publishes dietary labelling on its menus without an accommodation statement. Four publish nothing at all. None of the five inquiry forms asks about allergies or dietary needs. The practical consequence: you will sign a contract and a deposit before anyone at the venue has asked what your guests can eat. Raise it in your first email instead, in writing, with numbers.

What the venues actually publish

Gramercy Tavern is the only one with a stated commitment: “Our culinary team will always accommodate all allergies and dietary restrictions.” Its event menus also carry a symbol key — vegetarian, vegan, vegetarian-that-can-be-made-vegan, gluten free, dairy free. That is the strongest published position of the group, and it is worth knowing which venue in your shortlist has actually put it in writing.

Union Square Cafe publishes the same five-symbol key on its menus and goes further at the item level, flagging individual dishes with contents — a shrimp cocktail marked as containing shellfish, bar nuts marked as containing nuts. What it does not publish anywhere is a sentence saying the kitchen will accommodate a restriction. Labelling and accommodation are different promises. Labelling tells your guest what to avoid. Accommodation means the kitchen will cook something else.

Rezdôra, Scarpetta, Eataly Flatiron and Barbounia publish nothing on the subject on their private events pages. That is not a red flag about any of them — most restaurants handle allergies competently and simply never wrote it down. It does mean you have no documented position to point at later.

The timing problem

Here is the sequence that causes trouble, drawn from what the venues themselves publish about their process.

You inquire. The form collects headcount, date and times. It does not ask about diet. You get a proposal. You sign a contract and pay a deposit — at Gramercy Tavern, half the food and beverage minimum for a dinner; at Union Square Cafe, half the minimum as well. Only afterwards does the menu conversation begin. Gramercy Tavern states it plainly: “Once we have your signed contract, our team will reach out 10 days before your event with current menu options for you to make selections.”

Ten days out is late. If the set menu that comes back has two of its three entrées built on shellfish and you have a guest with a shellfish allergy, you are now negotiating substitutions inside a contract you have already signed, against a minimum you have already committed to. The venue will very likely solve it. But your leverage was at the proposal stage, and by then it is gone.

Union Square Cafe separately requires a final guest count forty-eight hours ahead. That is your last structural checkpoint, and it is the wrong one to be discovering an allergy at.

What to send in the first email

Use the free-text field. It is the only slot available, so make it carry weight. Send this before you receive a proposal:

A count, not a description. “Three of twenty-four guests have dietary restrictions: one severe tree nut allergy, one coeliac, one vegan.” A number lets the events manager check it against the menu they were about to send you. “We may have some dietary requirements” does not.

The severity of the worst one. There is a real operational difference between a preference and an anaphylactic allergy, and it changes what the kitchen does about cross-contamination. Say which you have.

A direct question about the set menu. “Do your group menus accommodate these within the per-person price, or as a substitution at additional cost?” Ask this before signing. Most venues will absorb it. You want to know which ones will not while you can still choose a different room.

A request for the menu key. If the venue publishes a dietary symbol key, ask for the event menus with the key applied. Both USHG venues use one; most others do not, and you will be reading dish descriptions instead.

What to get into the contract

A named substitution allowance. Not “the kitchen will accommodate,” which is hospitality language, but a line stating that alternative plates for identified restrictions are included at the contracted per-person rate. This is normal and most venues will agree to it.

Confirmation that substitutions count toward the minimum. Your guest’s alternative main should not be billed as an extra on top of a per-person charge you are already paying.

A note of the menu-selection date. If the venue reaches out ten days ahead, write that down and diarise it for fourteen. You want to be the one making that call.

What to confirm at ten days, and at forty-eight hours

At the menu-selection call, get the final dishes in writing with the restrictions matched to named guests. At the final guarantee — forty-eight hours at Union Square Cafe, and worth assuming something similar elsewhere — re-confirm both the headcount and the restriction count, because guest lists change and the person who dropped out may have been the vegan.

On the night, tell the captain at the start of service which seats have which restriction. Do not rely on the plate finding its way to the right chair from a note taken three weeks earlier.

A short checklist

• Count and classify restrictions before you inquire
• State them in the first email, in the free-text field, with severity
• Ask whether substitutions are inside or outside the per-person price
• Get the substitution allowance into the contract, not just the email thread
• Diarise the menu-selection date rather than waiting for the call
• Re-confirm restrictions at the final guest guarantee
• Brief the captain by seat on the night

Frequently Asked Question

Should I choose a private dining venue based on whether it publishes an allergy policy?

Not on its own — but it is a reasonable tiebreaker between two rooms you like equally. A published commitment tells you the venue has thought about the question at an organisational level rather than leaving it to whoever is on the pass that night, and it gives you something concrete to reference if a substitution gets awkward. What matters more is the answer you get to a direct question in your first email. A venue that publishes nothing but replies within a day with specifics about how its kitchen handles a nut allergy is a better bet than one with a policy page and a vague reply.

Before you commit

Minimums, deposit terms and menu prices at these venues change by season, and December is priced separately at both venues that publish minimums at all. Everything above was read from each venue’s own website and linked event documents on September 2, 2026. Confirm the current terms with the events team before you sign anything.

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Editor’s note: The Private Room is one of several New York dining sites published by the same owner, and its articles are produced with AI assistance. Capacities, minimums, menu prices and policies were read from each venue’s own website and its linked event documents on September 2, 2026 — confirm current terms directly with the venue before contracting.