The Sacred Table - Part II

Children and Restaurants

Post introduction:

This post is part of a series titled, The Sacred Table. In this series, I explore the importance of creating a daily habit of eating together as a family. As a lifelong restaurateur, many elements of serving guests in restaurants found their way into my home. We restaurant operators are the front line of hospitality. We are present during our guests greatest joys and heaviest sorrows. We are witness to men on their knees engagements and the occasional breakup. (By the way, the theory that one should go to a busy restaurant to facilitate a breakup is nonsense, one only increases the number of witnesses to a drink tossed into a face.) Graduations, baby showers, birthdays and anniversaries are just a few celebrations shared with others centered around a meal. When we share a meal with friends and family, we create a sacred space.

The Sacred Table extends beyond the home.

There may be no greater dread for a new parent than the thought of taking their young child to a restaurant. As a lifelong restaurant operator, I can safely say the dread is mutual. The seating of a young child in a server’s section comes with equal parts eyerolls and apprehension. How this situation plays out will bring praise or condemnation upon the parents who introduced a young child into the restaurant environment. And how you perceive my parenting in these situations will bring praise or condemnation upon your author as well.

Dining out as a family is a treat for exhausted parents looking for a night off from cooking and washing dishes. Raising children is a full-time job on top of a full-time job. Unloading that burden, for just a couple of hours, can move tired parents a couple of inches back towards sanity. But, if your child is unruly and causes a messy or noisy scene in the restaurant, the flight towards sanity quickly evaporates and the special treat of someone else cooking dinner fades into a nightmare. A nightmare that just costs you your weekly grocery budget.

Now, not every child acts the same way in a restaurant and as every server will note, not every parent will act the same either. Restaurants observe parents that will wholly ignore an ill-behaved child and go about their dinner as if that little Cretan doesn't belong to them. The child is left strapped in a highchair and allowed to kick, scream and hurl food about the section. I know this type of child and parent combination well, because a version of this pair is always seated directly behind me on every airline flight. Restaurant operators know this child parent duo as well as they have "HAZMAT" teams trained to quickly descend upon the newly vacated table of this ignored child to perform the cleanup and sanitizing duties. Like the child kicking my seat in the airplane for 2000 miles, I do not blame the child for his behavior, I blame the parents.

Preparing a child to dine in a restaurant does not start in the car ride on the way to your favorite local eatery. Readying a child to dine in a restaurant (or a neighbor's house for that matter) begins at home and it begins early. You cannot plead, beg or barter with a three-year-old in the car on the way to a restaurant. Telling a child that young that, "we are going to eat in a restaurant tonight and you need to behave" five minutes before you arrive at the restaurant is useless. A three-year-old cannot compartmentalize that concept. If your child is unruly and a disruptive eater at home, what makes you think that a one-directional five minute "restaurant dining decorum” discussion prior to entering the establishment is going to change that?

Preparing a child to dine out starts at home and must be practiced at every meal. It starts with sitting together as a family, at a set table, with no distractions. No distractions are important, that means no cell phones, television or music. Indeed, even though restaurants play background music, at home turn it off. Proper dining experiences require conversations and distractions of any kind hinder that end. Next, the table must be set. As I previously alluded to, from the moment my children ate solid food it was served on the family China with traditional silverware. When the child graduated from highchair to booster chair, the table was set before them. Set, as in a full table set representing all the plates and utensils required for each course I intended to serve at that meal. So that all could be present during the entire meal, most meals were served family style.

A typical table arrangement for dinner was a three-course informal set. The first course was salad, appetizer or soup, second course was entree, starch and vegetables and third course was dessert. Yes, there was always dessert. Finally, every meal was served with bread, butter, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The table set for this meal looked like this:

And yes, this was the set before my two-year old.

Now, here are the conversations we had with our children prior to entering a restaurant. We instructed them that we would be eating in a restaurant tonight. And here is the family rule. If one of you act inappropriately, you along with one parent will be removed from the table and will not return. I will tell you that each one of my three children tested this rule somewhere between their second and third birthday. At the first sign of disruption, the child and one parent promptly left the table and went to sit in the car while the rest of the family finished their meal. There was much crying and pleading by the banished child that they will behave if returned to finish the meal with their siblings. We never budged. Disruptive child and parent sat in the car until the rest of the family finished the meal and joined us. Upon returning home, a sandwich or some leftovers were prepared for the banished child, and they sat at the dining room table alone to eat their meal. This scenario happened precisely once with each of my three children. After this hard lesson was learned by each child, I never removed any of them from a restaurant again.

Because of this focus on dining decorum, by the time my children reached the age of five, I had no qualms about taking them anywhere or exposing them to adult events. As a family, we attended chamber music concerts, theater performances and full-length operas. Just like preparing to dine in a restaurant starts early in the home with daily practice, so does exposing your young children to cultural events. To prepare for an upcoming concert or performance, we would play the overture or an aria from the event prior to serving dinner and discuss what the children heard during dinner. If we were to attend Richard III or Romeo and Juliette, we discussed the plot and history of the play.

Quality conversation is the secret to training your children to dine. And by discussing an upcoming event over multiple evening meals sets the hook of anticipation and more importantly, the context that helps a five-year-old to understand and appreciate the experience. Now, I would be remiss if I did not disclose the secret to how we got our children excited about attending concerts with their parents. At intermission, they could choose the soda of their choice (a delicacy as sugar drinks were never available at home) and after each performance, we would go to Saint Paul Grill for dessert and coffee. As this restaurant is a formal white tablecloth establishment, I had no fear that my children would be able to enjoy the experience and behave appropriately, even after sitting through a three-hour performance, because they practiced how to dine every night at their Sacred Table, prepared specifically for them at their home.

Witnessing children that know how to act in a restaurant is not a matter of luck, it is simply a matter of daily practice. Families prepare and serve some form of a meal, whether home-cooked, microwaved, delivered in a box or taken in a restaurant three times per day, 365 days per year. That is nearly 1,100 dining experiences to practice every year. Practice, as the saying goes, makes perfect. With this many yearly dining sessions, there is no excuse for not “setting the table” and successfully teaching your children to enjoy and actively participate in family meals. You will quickly see that if you can develop the discipline at home, transferring it to a restaurant need not cause anxiety. It will, in fact, become quite enjoyable.

It is my sincere hope that, as my now adult children are at the age of starting their own families, that they harken back to their childhood meals and duplicate the experience. I was an overloaded single parent and the only way I could maintain a daily connection with my children occurred as we gathered nightly around our Sacred Table. It was at those meals, where we broke bread, that we discussed the events of the day and the schedules for tomorrow. As I was the head of the table, it was my duty to direct and moderate the conversations. Our nightly topics of discussions varied widely but basically fell into the six categories of Trivial Pursuit:

· Arts & Literature

· Entertainment

· Geography

· History

· Science & Nature

· Sports & Leisure

As my children progressed into junior high school, religion, politics and philosophy were added to the daily mix. My role as the moderator was to keep the conversations moving and to keep the competition fair. On many occasions, I took the role of devil’s advocate. My goal was not to antagonize my children. I honestly did not care what position they took on any topic. What I cared about was that they could defend their position. By the time my children were in senior high, many of our nightly dinners extended far beyond the time it took to eat dinner. I know there are many parents that wish they could create opportunities to have quality conversations with their children, especially as they grow older. I can tell you there were some nights when the conversations dragged so far beyond dinner that I wished they would end so I could clean up and go to bed. But I also knew that family time is sacred time and these precious hours at our family dining room table would not last forever.

All I can say is, if you want this type of family connection, it is never too late to start. You have approximately 1,100 dining opportunities per year with your family. I am told that it takes only 30 days to change a habit. Start now and do it for one month. I can feel your apprehension and your fear that you do not know how to do it. You worry that you are not a good cook, you do not know how to shop and prepare meals. And if you do, you lament that you simply do not have the time to “set” your Sacred Table. This is where my work comes in. Through this series, I will teach you how to create this magic. How to organize yourself and your home to put a meal on the table each and every day. I will give you the time-saving tricks I picked up in my years of operating restaurants that will make you look like a superstar, while not sacrificing you precious time. My goal is to teach you how to create your Sacred Table. Setting the table and preparing the meal are merely the vehicles for bringing your family together. It is through these special mealtimes, dedicated daily, that you and your family will grow stronger and will create the bonds of love a support that last a lifetime.

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