When you first hear about all the things Dita Locatelli can’t eat, it seems a cruel irony that she was born into a family that loves food so much. Her father Giorgio Locatelli and his wife Plaxy run the Michelin-starred Locanda Locatelli in Mayfair. It’s one of the best Italian restaurants in London and yet, for their daughter, their menu is a minefield. “It’s easier to say what she can eat than what she can’t,” says Plaxy. “We put a number on it once: she was allergic to 600 different things.”
These allergies are deadly serious. She suffers from anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction to multiple foods that can be life-threatening: if she takes a bite of a fresh tomato, say, or eats something containing peanuts, it could kill her. On holiday in the south of France when she was a baby, Dita ate some smoked salmon and went into anaphylactic shock. “Her face went boof, she couldn’t breathe,” says Giorgio. A passing fire crew administered adrenaline on the spot and saved her life.
Before this, Giorgio confesses that he, like many chefs, was sceptical of customers listing all the things they couldn’t eat. “‘He’s allergic to garlic? Aaah, he just wants to go kiss some girls later!’” Dita’s condition changed his entire approach. It’s made him more resourceful – an eggless marshmallow that his daughter can eat, which took years to perfect, is now on the Locanda Locatelli menu – and he goes to great lengths to make customers with special requirements feel welcome, sending staff on training courses and maintaining a separate kitchen to prevent cross-contamination.
Dita can testify to her parents’ seriousness. “I can’t believe the lengths they went to,” she says. During school, they made exact replicas of the canteen lunch, right down to the pasta shapes, so she wouldn’t feel different to other pupils. When she went on a school trip, they followed her to the ski resort and delivered meals in secret so her friends wouldn’t think she was getting special treatment.
Now 18 and in her first year of university, Dita seems more at ease with her condition and determined to get on with her life. When I ask if it’s been a challenge moving into shared accommodation in Bristol, the first thing she laments is not having access to good olive oil. Although there is no indication that her allergies will ever clear up, Dita has discovered that certain suspected foods are now safe for her to eat, including cooked tomato – a big deal for someone from an Italian background. And, having witnessed how university students eat, she’s realised that her diet is not so limited after all.
It strikes me that being born a Locatelli wasn’t a cruel irony but an extraordinary stroke of luck and Dita agrees. “One hundred per cent,” she says. “I don’t think I’d still be alive if I was born into any other family.”
For more info: anaphylaxis.org.uk
