Do you have highchairs?

Or how to take small children to restaurants without losing your mind and emptying your wallet.

 

When Eve was really little absolutely the only food she would eat away from our house was raisins.  That fact, combined with my obsessive adherence to nap times, meant that we didn’t often venture to restaurants and never had picnics.

Pre-children, we really enjoyed eating out and trying new foods, and when you are travelling it’s often your only option, so we’ve been practising with the children for a while now.  After a great deal of trial and error, mostly error, I like to think we’ve cracked it.  I don’t want to give the mistaken impression that every time we visit a restaurant, our children are beautifully behaved and eat everything on their plates, because we live in the real world and obviously that doesn’t happen, but we have reached a stage where eating out isn’t an anxiety ridden ordeal to be avoided at all costs.  So here are my tips: 

1. Small children are not known for their patience, and expect food to arrive the minute they sit down, so bring food with you.  I know it seems counter intuitive to take food to a restaurant, but it really works.  You can peruse the menu in peace while they fiddle with their cheerios, which hopefully will last until the food arrives.  Alternatively, ask for breadsticks, prawn crackers or juice the second you enter the door, before your order is taken.
2. In case the cheerios don’t last through the ordering and cooking process, bring books, pens and paper, or other low-key distractions.  I’m not a fan of bringing electronic entertainment to restaurants as I think that one of the great pleasures of eating out is the chance to talk without the normal distractions of home.
3. We avoid restaurants which market themselves to families.  They seem to assume that children should be herded together with other children, which makes for horrendous noise levels, and bad behaviour.  We find that our children behave better in quieter restaurants without tons of children running around screaming, and prefer to choose a venue for it’s food, not for the free balloons.
4. Take advantage of the fact that children like to eat early and go as soon as places open when they are quiet and you get served quickly.  We try to avoid eating out in the evening with the children, but when we have to, we go as early as possible, otherwise they get too tired and hungry to behave nicely.  I wouldn’t want small children intruding on my romantic evening out, however well behaved they were.
5. We have finally got our children used to the idea of sharing their food, which saves a lot of money as they never finish a whole portion, even a children’s one.  Far too often we’ve wasted food and money by ordering too much, and while doggy bags are a nice idea, if they didn’t wolf it down in the restaurant, they are unlikely to eat it at home.  We also share drinks, asking for one adult juice and a couple of extra glasses, or drink tap water like at home.  In Asian restaurants, we order lots of small dishes and share, and in Western restaurants, we tend to order one extra main course and ask for spare plates.  Dim sum or tapas are ideal as children love the little plates and wide variety.  
6. We don’t usually order from the children’s menu as it’s often inferior to the adult menu, although there are some exceptions like Pizza Express.  In my opinion, there is very little point in going to a restaurant to eat chicken nuggets (unless you’re in Disneyland and have no choice) and I’ve only ever been to one fish and chip place that offers real fish in the children’s meal.  We always make sure that we’ve ordered at least one thing that the children will eat, such as a portion of rice, then we use the opportunity to try new foods.  They constantly surprise me and have chosen and tried food I would never have predicted.  Our fussiest eater loves miso soup and Ned regularly asks for food like chicken’s feet and jelly fish.  He even eats it sometimes.
7. Although we don’t go to ‘family’ restaurants, we do like places with an element of interactivity.  Some of our favourites include conveyor belt sushi, a dim sum restaurant where you watch  towers of steaming bamboo baskets being stacked, a fish restaurant where you choose your raw fish and watch it being cooked, a Vietnamese cafe where you roll your own spring rolls or anywhere with a window into the kitchen.  Anything which holds their attention and therefore gains us an extra 10 minutes at the table has to be good.
8. We find anywhere that serves noodles is popular, whether they be Japanese, Malaysian, Chinese, Vietnamese or Italian.  There is something about them that is inherently funny and child friendly.
9. Once children have finished eating, they always want to get down STRAIGHT AWAY, so it’s wise to have an exit strategy to avoid them running around the restaurant like mad things.  Generally one of us takes them outside to play when they get restless, while the other one stays and pays.
10. Be prepared to tip heavily if you ever want to revisit the restaurant, as inevitably the children will make a huge amount of mess.  As a toddler, Dickon went through a phase of choking on his food and projectile vomiting.  It’s very embarrassing when your toddler is sick all over the table, highchair and floor, and even more embarrassing when the child at the next door table wanders over to investigate, and slips in the sick.  Most waiters have been lovely and long suffering, but I think we’ll leave it another couple of years before we venture back to that particular place.

We’ve had plenty of hilarious-after-the-event experiences in restaurants and I’m sure we’ll have many more as we travel around the world.  It may not be as cheap as a picnic, or as easy as eating at home, but taking children to restaurants can be really fun.  And you don’t have to do the washing up.