Kids On The Menu

 Should fancy restaurants bam kids? Do we want to discourage families from enjoying a night out? That's the controversy here in New Jersey. An upscale eatery has placed a ban on children under te age of ten. Is this a good idea? There are some pluses and more minuses.

The restaurant in question is Nettie's Spaghetti,in Tinton Falls, a fairly upscale town in oceanfront Monmouth County. The name sounds playful and welcoming for young ones yet it's more of a fancy place for date nights and small gatherings.It is expensive with no kid's menu in sight. A salad starts at fifteen dollars while a main meal of tuna cutlet goes for a whopping forty bucks and spinach fettucine is a pricey twenty-seven. Even the sides are expensive with eggplant and zucchini Parmesan going for eighteen dollars.Their signature spaghetti dish is almost thirty dollars, too dear for my tastes. Another distasteful aspect is that you're charged twenty dollars for cancelling a reservation within a day of reserving a table. Not even Manhattan's four star restaurants pull that trick. Not even David Burke , the famed chef who's conquoring the Jersey shore has done this.Now to add to this is the kid ban. This has infuriated parents all over the area. 

The question is is this a good thing? Go to Nettie's Facebook page and you see a myriad of fors and againsts.One person astutely pointed out that no restaurants makes money off a kid's menu.This makes sense because children don't have the appetite of adults nor do they order alcohol. There is an indeed a financial loss here however many other upscale places also have kids  menus. They don't seem to be bothered by the lost. Many others feel that the blame goes to the parents (let's face it  - it does).Moms and dads who let the little ones climb on the seats or run between tables need to be disciplined themselves.It just doesn;t fly whether it's in a McDonalad's or Wendy's or in an upscale place. A disciplined child is a delight to behold and a quiet well behaved one can eat at any restaurant. A respectful four year old is a better dinner companion than a drunk thirty something or a constantly complaining fifty year old. There's also the philosophy -which my parents believed in - is that children need to eat out.One to experience  dining out of the home and two, to exercise those learned manners. It does pay off. Eating out helps kids experience diffrent foods and to see the world outside their own.

Is Nettie's Spaghetti doing the right thing by banning kids under ten. That depends on who you ask. There are many opinions.Is there a right one? That's hard to say.