Hey friends! We have a lil baby girl who arrived last Saturday, our first. She’s great, mom’s great, everything rules.
As we look forward to our new reality of dining out - obvs for anything we can well get a sitter but what are some of the parents on this forum (or observers of well behaved kids/parents are restaurants) favorite places to bring a bb where their parents can still have a nice meal.
Think 5:00 seatings, maybe patios (my inspiration was an amazing mom crushing a whole plate short rib at domo while breastfeeding), spots where if we have to up and leave we can box shit up and rock on home.
Will be following everyone’s posts longingly until it’s time to dine out again, so I guess I’ll also take mid city ish take out reccos
Congrats on the new addition! Birdie G’s always comes to mind first for kid-friendly places. I have seen all ages there from newborns on up and they have a kids menu. Heated patio as well and easy access with no stairs.
Breweries are the best places for babies lol. All restaurants are great for babies also but the second they make a peep you better get outside no matter what has just dropped on your table. Congrats!
Congrats. I think going at 5pm is the best idea. You’ll have access to lots of reservations. Take advantage of the time before they start to walk. We went out for a lot of early dinners with our first kid sleeping. We only had 1 bad experience when my son was very fussy at Passionfish in Monterey. Great food but we had to switch off holding the baby in the bathroom/outside and eat solo.
Congrats!! Your best window for restaurant dining is before baby starts crawling tbh, and their cries are quieter when they’re little too haha. Would definitely recommend the 5pm patio dinners, and be ready to take turns walking away with baby.
We’ve done alright at a few nice-ish places with patios and an easy walk-away areas:
Majordomo
Queen Street
Barra Santos
Hippo
Highly Likely HLP
Bar Sinizki
And then more casual spots like:
Hermosillo (basically a preschool on weekends)
Highland Park Brewing
Smorgasburg
Homestate
Yellow Paper
Spoke
Came here to say this exactly. We went to a brewery recently that had seriously half a dozen babies within an hour.
In a similar vein, food halls are also pretty decent especially if they have outdoor seating. We were at Holbox with a four month old the other day and it really worked out because 1) it was loud enough that the baby could barely be heard and 2) there’s plenty of seating and options for eating.
our kid grew up at wineries and breweries.. at age 11 he realized what’s happening and has been pushing back.. the problem now extends to happy hours while traveling.
Kids’ personalities will emerge quite early on. As parents, you’ll see if your kiddo’s temperament will allow them to be able to “hang” with mommy and daddy during a restaurant meal (or not)…
My experience has been that Spain / Spanish restaurants loves babies in general, whereas France and Japan, not so much…
In our experience, it really helps to “expose” your child early on to restaurants which also includes some “limitations” once they are getting a little bit older for example that restaurants aren’t playgrounds - often a controversial topic in the US but you rarely see even small children run around in European restaurants. And don’t get me started on IPhones to distract even babies but that seems to become more and more a “problem” with adults). We took our daughter early on to all types of restaurants (with the exception of high-end tasting menus ones) but you have to willing to also go outside or do something else on those days when they have a bad day (also out of respect for other guest). We preferred not going early but our regular times (sometime between 7-8pm) as restaurants tend to be louder anyway and actual “entertain” toddlers more.
Congrats! Super young babies are just blobs you can take anywhere. The main pro of 5 pm is that half of the other people in the restaurant have kids too so you don’t feel awkward.
