I love kids but I couldn't eat a whole one ;) (Kids and Restaurants)

Member Name: azana

Product:	Kids and Restaurants
Date:	27/01/09 (120 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Eating out as a family is nice

Disadvantages: Food not good enough

In countries such as Italy, France and Spain it seems that children are seen as part of the restaurant clientele and welcomed as such (when I was an au pair in Paris we ate out every single day) whereas eating out with children in the UK can be, in my experience, more problematic.

First of all let me say that I don't think children should be massively seen and heard at restaurants. I find other people's children highly annoying if they are allowed to wander around the room up to other tables - why??! - whilst the parents happily ignore them and expect other guests to provide the entertainment. I think children should, like adults, be there to eat and actually be expected to behave. I have had incidents where my children have been a bit too loud, at which point I might take them outside for a bit, but generally they are so busy filling their faces that you probably wouldn't notice they were there if you were another guest.

I tend to make sure we have one course, that I take something for them to do whilst they are waiting for their food and generally expect them to behave well; normally they do actually.

That said other guests and the restaurants themselves can be most unwelcoming. Once my children were eating in total silence in a pub and a man arrived, sat at the next table, saw my children and made a huge song and dance about moving. This was highly unfair - he could have moved discretely, something I must confess to having done myself quietly, on the rare occassions I go out for an adult meal I would rather there not be children at the very next table.

As far as the food goes I am not sure why we still get so called "kids' food" so wrong. Things are getting better with some places providing mini portions of adult food - my kids recently had a delicious home made salmon fishcake and hand cut chips - but too often the kids' food is the cheapest nastiest food. I once went to a very posh wedding in a nice hotel where the children were served up frozen pizza starter, and the very cheapest chicken nuggets - not something I would want my kids to eat if I could avoid it necessarily. When restaurants see kids' food as cheap unhealthy food it is just not good enough - if I want that I will take them to Mc Donald's, the mecca of restaurants to my kids!

As a society if we really want our children to grow up eating healthily and behaving in a polite fashion perhaps we should be encouraging this from the start. If the school canteen can now serve up a healthy balanced meal for £1.80 (well mine can - thanks Jamie!), why can restaurants get away with charging top whack for the cheapest most awful food?

Overall kids' food is improving but I think restaurants still need to do more to make sure they don't treat children as second class customers - I have no problem with children free zones in restaurants, something which I have seen as late, but for goodness sake serve up something more inspired than reformed chicken nuggets and chips!

Oh and those parents of children wandering around in restaurants, running riot, and generally being a pain; it isn't "cute" and gives the rest of us a bad name!

Summary: Why poor food and poor behaviour drives me mad