Jill Lewis at The Heavy Table, a local food blog, has a restaurant column called "Take the Kids?" in which she reviews restaurants from a family perspective. A recent column about a local restaurant that generally gets rave reviews but didn't work as a family destination drew a comment from me that I thought I'd share.
Thanks for the review. We try to make a point of taking our four kids (ages 1, 4, 7, 10 now) to a "real" restaurant at least once a month — how else are they going to learn how to behave? — but I'm not interested in places where they will be viewed with disdain!
The existence of a kids menu or discounted drinks or a so-called "family hour" doesn't much affect whether we feel out-of-place at a restaurant. Every parent knows (I hope) that "family hour" at any restaurant is early on a weeknight! If you ask me, the factors that make a restaurant really easy to enjoy with several young children are these:
- - some lively background noise to mask little outbursts (unless the children are sensitized to it — mine aren't).
- – high-backed booths (thank you, Black Sheep Pizza!) or tables tucked into corners
- - unbreakable cups available on request
- – spacious bathrooms with changing tables
- - french fries in some form on the menu (face it, everybody loves french fries)
- – servers who behave as if children are people who might grow up to come there and spend money
Things that scare me away include
- tables that are made of slate so that a glass breaks just from being tipped over
- - glass-topped tables — they are LOUD
- – dangly tablecloths that little feet get tangled in
- – tippy chairs
- - layouts where the only tables for parties of six are smack in the middle of the room at giant round tables
One of the biggest factors is something that successful restaurants probably can't do much about without altering their customer base, and that has to do with the expectations of the other people who dine there. Every restaurant has a "culture" (it may be different at lunch vs. dinner, or weekday vs. weekends, of course) of the customers who come there and have a certain expectation. Some restaurants, kids just aren't what the diners expect when they go there. And we're going to feel it if we walk in and people stare at us. And so, you know, we're not going to come back.
Nothing wrong with that; our money will go where we feel comfortable. There are plenty of restaurants around town who help us feel comfortable, some not what you would expect. Wasabi [this is a hip, warehouse district sushi place] is one. Muffuletta [another upscale restaurant in St. Paul with great weeknight discounts] is another.
It was a little tongue-in-cheek for me to write that about family hour being early on a weeknight — but when we try a new restaurant we always try to go at that time, since even if it turns out to be a bad fit for us, we won't be there at a busy time. Another time we often go out is after 9 p.m. on a Thursday, after a show at the Children's Theater Company. That often brings out the best in servers and other diners, since our kids are all dressed up and in a good mood.
It seems that if a restaurant is also a bar, it is usually a good place to take kids. People are more relaxed and noisy, and the servers tend to be more cheerful. I don't know why that is. Televisions are a problem though.
I am not disdainful of restaurants that happen to have clinky tables and quiet dining environments with soft music — but I don't try to take my four children there because I know we will stand out like a sore thumb. They just "aren't my style" at this stage in my life. Maybe not in general, since I like background noise.
Can you list features of restaurants that make them "kid-friendly" or "kid-unfriendly," things that go deeper than whether they have a kid's menu or advertise themselves as a "family" restaurant?
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