It’s a question dividing diners across the country. Should your next special meal out be served with a side of noisy children? Here’s the case for and against — and you can have your say.
There is also a growing number of couples aged in their 30s and 40s who are accustomed to dining out regularly – they can’t afford mortgages, after all – and want to continue to do so with children in tow.
All parents feel torn between their various responsibilities. To be present caregivers, to be buoyant after a late night out and to feel permanently guilty, for example.
But now the question arises, should they also be publicly shamed, banned even, when dining out with the world’s most unfashionable accessory?
Possibly. Why does the rest of civilised society have to suffer the giggling ramifications of their life decisions?
Should children be welcome in fine-dining restaurants?
Here are the cases for and against allowing children into fancy restaurants.
THE CASE AGAINST
It is traditional to first make the argument “for” in for-and-against stories, but let’s get the bleeding obvious out of the way. Children in fancy restaurants is a terrible idea.
We might as well call the matter settled, and go out for a meal with other mature adults to cheer “here here” unanimously and without distraction from tiny humans.
As any parent knows, boredom breeds boisterous behaviour. When you take young children to a slow restaurant – and most fancy restaurants are slow restaurants – it’s like setting them free in a china shop, or a Reidel glassware exhibition, on rollerskates, holding swords.
Most fine dining restaurants, standing firmly on this side of the fence, do everything possible to put hazardous materials in front of diners just in case a free-thinking couple decides to bring little Frankie along next time they visit.
Is teaching your children to behave in fancy restaurants a good or bad idea?
Tablecloths crying out to be yanked, steak knives, shiny salt and pepper grinders, candles: It’s all shrapnel waiting to injure your precious offspring.
Kids are impatient. That goes with the territory of being a kid. They want their food now, their water now and their scoop of ice cream yesterday. They do not want to wait for the passionfruit brulee and brandy cream.
Tupperware filled with crackers, raisins and smushed strawberries, drawing material; none of it will diminish the fundamental wrong of bringing a young child into a fancy restaurant.
And the one thing that belongs in a fancy restaurant less than a young child is a screen blaring Peppa Pig. Bring neither. And I’m not the only one who thinks this. I took a vote and all the children agree.
This is the gist of the poll: “Leave us at home, give us a night off, and go and play quietly together. Then, tomorrow bright and early, we will soothe your sore heads with a relaxing tune of forks and metal-bowl percussion. Go on, have fun.”
THE CASE FOR
Shock: Parents want to be part of society and to determine their own social calendars, even though they have reproduced.
There’s a strong case for spending quality time with children. Especially at mealtimes. It’s a chance for kids to learn some major lessons about what it means to be human, and part of something bigger than they are, figuratively. Here’s why.
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It takes a village to raise children who know how to behave in company. So bear with us, adjoining table, while we show little Evie that she is precious, but that we also expect her to put her tiny ego and immediate needs behind those of others, even if just for one meal, as an important step to becoming a functioning future-adult.
I’m no therapist, but I’d love to know the links between narcissistic and self-loathing grown-ups and the kind of child raising that involves meal times spent without conversation, or in front of screens.
In restaurants, fancy or not, that means being trusted to sit patiently, ask politely, involve yourself in the verbal back-and-forth and damn well listen to other people’s point of view. Is someone yelling? Oh, that’s me.
Occasionally – did someone order hens’ teeth? – a child will try something new to eat at a restaurant and be happy about it. At a slightly fancy izakaya my six-year-old was so delighted by the segmentation of his food in a bento box that he forgot to complain about the contents within.
He even tried grilled unagi (just don’t tell him it was eel) and loved it. There may even be a next time, once I recover from his four-year-old sister’s cataclysmic meltdown after not being allowed a yuzu margarita from the slushie machine.
An often spoken rule of parents who dine out with kids is the more action around them, the less action by them.
Should other diners have to suffer if children play up in restaurants?
Fancy fine dining, 25-course-degustation meals are not the good kind of fancy to try with kids. A booth seat is a dream when dining with children who have itchy feet or find a place where the food service is rapid-fire. Teach them how to share, how to experiment and how to apologise to a waiter when the plate ends up on their lap.
Getting it wrong some of the time, or a whole lot of time, is what parenting is. Sorry if we’re a bit rough around the edges and noisy and aren’t wearing matching socks, but we’re emerging from a fog of raising and nurturing with immense love the next generation. And we need dinner.
So by all means, drag your offspring out with you after a long day at work, go wild! We know they will.
And apologies to all the stuffy naysayers – myself included – who think kids should be seen and not heard, and preferably not actually seen, but one day these kids will grow up to be adults. And what extraordinary adults they will be.
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