Eat & drink

We understand how challenging it can be when you have specific food allergies or are unable to eat gluten. When you visit us, please be sure to consult with our allergen champions on-site who will be happy to adapt dishes or explain how they are made for you, to help you make a decision about what you would like to eat. Our allergen champions are fully trained and have information available that details all the allergens in food served that day. If you ask any member of staff, they will be able to locate the allergen champion for you.

At the Barbican Kitchen, every salad, sandwich and hot food item that you see is made on-site; and every cake is made either on-site or in our London bakery. This means we can guarantee the quality of our products, but it also means that we make everything in regular commercial kitchens. Unfortunately, these are also kitchens that handle gluten containing ingredients every day.  

We make a lot of products without gluten - cakes, sandwiches, salads and many other things. We try our best to avoid cross contamination, but because they are made in kitchens that handle gluten, we can’t declare our products as ‘gluten free’. Only products sampled and guaranteed as having less than 20ppm of gluten in them can be labelled as ‘gluten free’. It’s because we make our products by hand that whilst we don’t include gluten, we cannot guarantee through sampling that we will meet this exceptionally low level. 

We hope this reassures you that we take allergen awareness seriously and look forward to welcoming you to the Barbican.