Chips, fish fingers, pizza … restaurant food for children is depressingly predictable. Are there more adventurous options? I took my four-year-old daughter on a month-long mission to find out
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e’re heading out for dinner. Before I tell my four-year-old where we’re going, she has already announced that she’s going to have fish, chips and lots of ketchup. It sounds delicious; a classic. But there’s the irksome feeling that the intrepid impulses of childhood should be met with food that expands palates rather than feeding into the well-trodden path to a beige meal.
My guilt is only slightly assuaged by the ungenerous thought that maybe I can lay some blame at other people’s feet. Namely – as if it hasn’t got enough on its plate already – the hospitality industry. A certainty of fish and chips hasn’t come from nowhere – so often, regardless of the type of restaurant, kids’ menus have the same fodder.
There must be good reason. I turn to the internet for answers and come across a Substack from food writer Mallika Basu. “The restaurant kids’ menu is a divisive piece of paper,” she writes. “A routine homage to chips, fish fingers, burgers and pizzas, they are seat bait to keep little Ginnie and Jonnie happy and still, while you inhale your meal.” Parents will probably know this feeling well: frantically guzzling lunch hoping to finish before your kid starts hanging off a plant.
