Fine-Dining Club in NYC Makes Eating at Restaurants with Kids a Breeze

Without young kids dining out is simple.  You make a reservation, enjoy your meal and pay the check. With kids it’s more complicated. You Google hot new restaurant openings wistfully but then decide to go to local diner instead. Once you are there you grit your teeth as your child refuses to eat/throws food/tips cutlery onto floor/gets bored waiting for food and starts crying. You then leave early, tipping generously to make up for mess on floor under crusty high chair. On the way home you realize you only ate half of your own meal.

Nibble + Squeak founder Melissa Elders wants to change this all. In January she launched a dining club for tots and their parents that hosts events in the fine restaurants of New York City and London.  So far the club has seen parents enjoy meals at top establishments such as Delaware and Hudson, Upland, and Luksus, with many more planned. Elders, herself a mother of a fifteen month old, wants parents to be able to enjoy their local food scene as much as non-parents and normalize restaurant dining for families.

The Brooklyn mom of one works with restaurants to create child friendly fine-dining, proving that that’s not an oxymoron. There are kids menus, private rooms, high chairs and most importantly, a relaxed attitude to the sorts of toddler shenanigans only a two year old on a sugar high can provide.

My husband and I tried out the concept at a recent event at the Landmarc, Time Warner Center, along with my two year old son and five month old daughter.

We arrived to see a dozen strollers parked outside the front door. “We must be in the right place,” my husband commented, before we were led into a private room with large circular tables, already half full of families with toddlers and babies. While not all the events are in private rooms, doing it this way gives families more freedom and less concern about disturbing other diners.