Pacini Shawinigan

Excellent restaurant with lots of gluten-free choices

If you are celiac, this restaurant should be avoided although the menu indicates that gluten-free dishes are offered. This restaurant chain seems to have added this offer without really understanding the seriousness of gluten intolerance. The menu is incomprehensible on the subject and the waitress obviously did not master the subject... How can we offer allergen-free dishes that contain gluten? However, this is what we were able to read with amazement on the menu. After asking a few questions to the waitress who didn't really help us, my husband ordered a spaghetti bolognese, which seemed the most "safe" on the menu. He got gluten free pasta topped with nice strips of regular fried lasagna pasta. And when we mentioned it to the waitress, she couldn't think of anything better to say than "you're right, this pasta is not gluten free". For dessert, he was treated to a sorbet whose packaging indicated nut-free, lactose-free and egg-free. No mention of gluten. Again, when we mentioned it to the waitress, she told us it was the allergen-free dessert offered by Paccini...probably the offering among the gluten-containing allergen-free dishes as mentioned above. And what more can we say about the sorbet except that we would have needed a steak knife to extract the contents of the small container... The power of their freezer should definitely be reduced! In short, very bad experience and very poor management in terms of the allergen-free offer, which is a shame for a chain of this size. You have a lot of crust (gluten-free of course) to eat to achieve the quality of service for people with celiac disease. You would benefit from visiting restaurants like Ottavio (Montreal, Laval and Brossard), Vincenzo or Angéline. Hoping that the menu will be corrected quickly and that employees will be better trained to respond to customers. For you and for the many coeliacs!