A New Dining Trend? (we can only hope)

Here's a question for you - and I think I know what your answer will be: If you knew of a restaurant that had a "Screaming Children Will not be Tolerated" sign on their door, would you be more or less likely to patronize that restaurant?

Kudos to Old Salty's Restaurant in Carolina Beach, North Carolina for enforcing a No Screaming Kids policy. Have a kid who is carrying on and screaming bloody murder? You're out the door. Can't control your kids and don't care how they are disrupting the dining experience of other patrons? Hit the road, Jack. Don't have the common decency or consideration to take your kid outside if he is throwing a full-blown tantrum? Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Of course, no matter how reasonable and sensible something is, there's always someone who will take offense. Watch this clip from the Today Show and witness a mom getting her panties in a twist over Old Salty's policy. How dare someone require her to control her child! How dare someone prevent her kid from annoying and ruining the meal of everyone in the restaurant! How dare someone not kiss up families! This is America! It's all about babies - and mommies -and families and look at us - we are the circus and we have come to town!!!

I say kudos to proprietor Brenda for having the guts to put her foot down and say enough is enough. I hope more restaurants will follow her lead. In fact, why stop at a No Screaming Kids policy? How about a Kid-Free Dining Section? Let the families with kids have their own rubber-walled dining room where the kids can stand on the tables, eat without utencils, smear food on each other and have screaming matches while the parents pin awards on them for being exceptionally expressive. Let the rest of us dine in peace.

Hubby Sets the Hotel Straight

My hubby (on his own initiative) sent the hotel where we had the breakfast I wrote about this e-mail:

Greetings,

My wife and I were patrons of your breakfast buffet yesterday morning (5/23) at around 9:00 am. The food and waitstaff service were excellent, but I felt you should know about a service issue with the hostess.

I didn't notice her name (a blond woman, appx. late 20's), but when we arrived and were guided to our table by the hostess, we noticed that it was adjacent to a table with screaming children. We requested that we be seated away from this table, and even though the dining room had not yet begun to fill, she immediately balked at the request, and began what seemed to be an improvised version of 'house procedure' regarding how this would inconvenience the waitstaff, how we don't 'do that', etc. Eventually we were seated, with reluctance away from the disturbance, which was continual and filled the room.

I understand that, in a large dining room, servers have their own 'sections', but I think that a hotel with the reputation of your hotel would be more considerate of its patrons (and potential guests), and I would also submit that, even though the proximity to the amusement park demands that the restaurant be 'family-friendly', the experience of elegance that the hotel tries so hard to provide is ruined by a reluctance to enforce basic consideration among the patrons with young children, or provide a separate dining room for couples. I know this is a delicate issue for management, but during our meal I also noticed children writhing on windowsills, running between tables, etc. My initial impression of the hotel's grandeur is dampened, knowing the experience for civilized adults apparently doesn't differ from that of IHOP or Chuck E. Cheese.

Thank you for your consideration in this.

White Linens and Apes

Because there is simply no end to restaurant sagas, I share with you another installment.

Hubby and me were recently away on a mini-vacation and ended it with a lovely breakfast at a fancy hotel. The hotel was on a sprawling country estate and the dining room was a fancy-shmancy affair with white linen draped tablecloths, fine china and panoramic views of the countryside. (This is an actual photo of the dining room). The place just oozed old school sophistication - not a place any reasonable person would think to bring small children. However, because a major amusement park is located nearby, many hairbrained parents felt it was perfectly acceptable to take their children here for breakfast, instead of to the far more suitable local Denny's.

Upon arriving, the hostess escorted us to a table smack-dab between 2 young families, one of which had a toddler who was in the process of having a full-blown hissy fit; the other table with 3 young children who were climbing on the chairs like out-of-control apes. Realizing that this was going to make for a very unpleasant experience, I asked the hostess if she could please seat us away from the tables with small children. Well, you should have seen the look she gave me. It was a look of total incomprehension, as though I had asked her to board us onto a rocket ship in the center of the dining room and launch us into outer space. It took her about 10 seconds of looking at me blankly before she was able to comprehend my request, at which time she launched into a full-blown explanation of their seating procedures and how, in order to be fair to all the waitresses, they must seat their customers in certain sections, in the order in which the customers arrive.

I told her that is all well and good, but repeated our preference of not being seated near families with small children. I pointed to an empty table across the room that was a good distance away from the kinder-calamities and asked her if we could be seated there. After some more hemming and hawing, a consultation with the dining room manager, and making it obvious to us that we were really putting her out, she finally agreed to seat us there.

Of course it was only a matter of time before more families came into the dining room, filling the formerly-quiet tables around us. At one point during our meal, I looked around the dining room at the goings-on. One family had a child who was talking and singing at the TOP OF HER LUNGS. Not once did either parent instruct her to quiet down. She just kept on talking and singing to the annoyance of everyone except her parents.

At another nearby table with slightly older children, we watched as 2 of the children ran around their table playing tag while the oblivious parents ate their breakfast, never once even looking up from their plates to so much as visually acknowledge their ill behavior. Their third child, a boy who looked to be about 10 years old, had apparently gotten bored at the table, so he proceeded to perch himself upon one of the dining room's windowsills and played with his shoelaces, again, all within the sight of the parents and dining room staff and all without a single disciplinary comment from any of them.

Hubby and me just shook our heads and like two old farts, reminisced about our own upbringings and how in our day we would have never DREAMED of exhibiting such behavior because our parents would have immediately put a stop to it. We were well aware that there were certain behaviors that went along with dining out in restaurants and singing, playing tag and climbing on chairs and windowsills like monkeys was not among them.

This stuff may seem minor, but it truly makes us fear for our future. What is our world going to be like when the coddled products of these lazy, inconsiderate, oblivious and overly-permissive parents are running the world? The thought of this truly sends shivers of fear down our spines.