allergy charts

Where I'm from, asking your waiter about the ingredients in a dish usually prompts one of two responses: 1) "You can't have this, this, or this. But this and this are safe to eat."
2) "Uh, I'll ask the kitchen and get back to you."

While visiting London, I was really surprised that the near universal response was "here's our allergy chart."

When I'm in a restaurant, I expect to be able to ask questions about the menu and receive immediately useful answers. I use my analytical brain enough during the day. I don't appreciate being told to look at another spreadsheet alongside a menu to figure out what I can eat without being sent to the hospital.

Part of the considerable premium I'm paying for when I eat out is for a human to help me figure out what I want to eat based on his or her unique and specialized knowledge of the items on the menu. Part of my job is to familiarize myself with the specialized internal tools and processes of my employer; I think it's reasonable to expect the same of food service employees. If a customer asked me which of my company's products or services to choose based on their unique requirements and I immediately directed them to a product comparison chart, that would be an abdication of responsibility.

I assume it boils down to limiting liability and training costs. It's a much higher risk (and investment) for a restaurant to rely on a waiter's knowledge of the menu rather than to outsource the decision process to the customer. But I think there's something qualitatively inferior about the experience of asking a reasonable question like "can I eat this without dying" and receiving what amounts to "figure it out yourself, bud."