Kids in restaurants-yes or no?

I wrote this a while back but a conversation between friends yesterday reminded me that it is still a vexed issue

Should kids be allowed in restaurants? If you were Paul Lynch, former iconic Melbourne restaurateur, you would snarl ‘no’ through your Cuban cigar. If you were the Judge presiding over the infamous case a few years ago, you’d arch your eyebrow & say ‘yes’ & smack that hammer down with a flourish. Either way it’s a hot topic.

Having children of my own I can especially relate to the rare times that my partner & I escaped to enjoy the luxury of a meal, sans enfant. It’s correct to describe it as an escape though & I feel that perhaps some of us resent the appearance of children in the dining room because it is we ourselves who get to BE child-like at the restaurant. Think about it. You arrive, you are pampered, you choose what you want, you order people around, they obey without complaint, they love you (at least love your wallet) you eat & you drink. It’s a fantasy & it ends when the bill is presented & you have to go home to reality. Perhaps when kids are around it somehow robs us of our chance to be the centre of attention?

I will confess that I actually don’t mind kids in the dining room both as a punter & as a professional BUT other people might & this may affect their experience in a negative way. This gives cause for concern, they may not come back. Sure children are a part of society but if you have your own & want a quiet night without them, are you unreasonable because you don’t want to suffer the children of others?

A point to clarify, not all kids are a drag in the dining room. However the ones that are, can have an effect like a nail down a blackboard. What to do?

There’s a real sense of irony when the harshest critics of the appearance of small people in the inner sanctum of a dining room do a back-flip as soon as they have children themselves. The glare that was once aimed at the guilty parent daring to bring little Charlotte into the hallowed gastro temple is now reserved for the neighboring customer who dares to complain if toddler Jackson rubs butter on their cashmere. From how dare you to How could you in nine months. They are as insufferable as ex-smokers.

OK, that’s more serious restaurants covered, what about more casual eateries? To me it’s true to say that these places are fair game to encounter children. Why though do many present the most unappealing grot masquerading as the dreaded ‘Children’s menu?’ Observe the unholy trinity of nuggets, fish & chips & spag bol. Sort of says it all really doesn’t it? Do these restaurateurs & chefs have kids? More poignantly do they feed their offspring the same shite every time they go out? Why is it that time after time the kids menu is the most unhealthy & unimaginative?
One theory is that its there just to appease & shut them up with a deep-fried dummy. Also I think that some parents secretly spoil their kids with the fried choices that THEY actually crave. You don’t believe me? Well check out how many chips Mum & Dad scoff whilst little Josh looks the other way! He soon learns that fried food is a valuable commodity indeed. So valuable in fact, that his Mummy & Daddy will steal food from their own flesh & blood! He then realizes he has to eat them quickly & as a result, ends his meal before his parents get theirs. Naturally, he gets bored & fidgety & starts to complain. This causes them to get anxious & other diners start eyeballing them until the awkwardness sets in. Soon Josh is screaming around the tables with the sauce bottle on his head, the parents pay the bill & leave to the relieved sighs of the other eaters. The self fulfilling prophecy at work, remember that when you pinch a chip next time!

Wilderness sketch

A lightness of step toward the car, the mobile switched off
A flask of Bushells, a sanga, some fruit & some choccy,
The snug fit of the polar fleece, too hot for the car.
A map, a book & a National Parks sticker all paid up!
The road South, winding & with every curve, expectation.
Through hamlets, houses, washing lines & roadside fruit stalls
Poverty, fleetingly glimpsed, reflecting three generations not knowing work & sometimes school
We are deep into Ute, ammo, bait & ice-country.
Roadkill intensifies & we do the giant slalom to avoid it.
A single flowered memorial of a car crash victim flashes by, outnumbered by the native cadavers that precede it.
Near it, steely stares peer beneath a No Greens windshield.
Etched with suspicion, faces of prejudice & hardship. It resonates.
The road beckons & we are soon delivered into the theme park of a symmetrical green woodland fantasy.
The columns of trees, poised, balanced & coiffed, remind me of a model train diorama.
Beaming from billboards, the propagandist smiles of timber loving actors watch over us.
I’m tempted to scrawl graffiti for the first time in my life. A single black tooth would be my act of civil disobedience.
We press on deeper until we pass through the imaginary turnstiles & this ersatz forest finally loosens its surreal grip & morphs into something more ancient.
The chaos of the authentic woodland swallows our little car & something from within ruptures from me, ballooning skyward, released.
I imagine looking at it from high above, like a little burring zipper unfastening a large velvet curtain of emerald
The blur of jade, windows down & inhaling to bursting point, the wonderful dizziness follows.
And with an exultant grin, split from ear to ear, I put my head out into the rush of wind & rapturously scream!

Stuff middle class forty something dads like

An informed & err ...well studied observation

Deus ex Machina

Vintage local footy tops

The Birthday party, Died Pretty, the Necks

Thick rimmed spectacles

Comfort food

Old school pubs

Flirting with their children’s hot teacher

Newspapers & their supplements

Shaun Micalef

Longboarding

Wayfarers

Kayaking

Cycling

East West 101

Talkin 'bout my generation

Precision home brewing

Pork pie hats

Dynamic Hepnotics

Fitzroy, South Melbourne or Footscray football clubs

Eric Bana’s ‘Love the beast’

Susie Porter, Juanita Phillips, Abbey Cornish

Safe ethnic food that doesn’t make one fart (too much)

Birkenstocks

Camping

Cleanskin wine

Haute barbeque

Classic European automobiles

Food product weasel words

Some weasel words marketing food that you may see & how to decipher them

Bred free range
Ok so they spend only the last weeks of their lives outside & may have come from free range parents

Eco-shelter
I’m sure it’s not a hut designed by Glen Murcott!

Cage-free
Define cage please?

Near grass
This is supposed to make me feel better?

Grass flavoured pellet fed
Grass flavoured pellets; you’ve got to be joking

Humanely reared
A contradiction in terms surely

Hand reared
Whose hand-a robot’s?

Cushion-caged battery hens
Soft padding makes a cage sound better-I don’t think so

With proximity to free range
What does this mean? Every second day they go outside?

Free range-caged-they choose
You mean they choose a cage because its shelter rather than going outside?

Grass controlled diet
What, they aren’t allowed to eat too much grass?

Habitat raised
What the hell does this mean? Whose habitat-a factory worker’s?

Fresh frozen
Frozen is frozen

A safe or better choice
Safe? From what, veggies grown in soil, scary! Better, for whom, big food multis or me?

Sustainable caught Patagonian Tooth fish
I don’t think so

Net caught fish
Err, are they kidding

Dolphin friendly tuna
Dead Dolphins are not friendly or grateful, they are dead

Green seas
Green & net fishing shouldn’t go in the same sentence

Eco aware
Hmm, they might be aware but what are they doing about it?

Green conscious
More like green un-conscious

Eating down South

I posted this two years ago (I know re-posting again, lazy bastard that I am) & my sentiments about operating a country café here in Tas remain unchanged. However you’ll notice that I have highlighted the restaurants & cafes that no longer exist.

It's an interesting fact that the Kingston area is greatly under serviced by any decent eating places. This is also surprising as Kingston is supposed to be one of, if not, the, fasted growing municipality in Tasmania.
I have been told from an old salt, a long time resident of the area, that it is also a deeply conservative & devout enclave of Lutheran values. Whether this has anything to do with the dearth of eating houses is not clear but perhaps these values are well represented at council level & in particular, planning & licensing?
That said, it did manage to rubber stamp the absolute mish-mash of Cashed-up-Bogan style, Channel Court though?! The busiest place by a country mile is a Gloria Jeans franchise, I don’t get it?

Plenty of us new to the State are scratching our heads in wonderment why we don’t have this or don’t have that, particularly when it comes to good restaurants & cafes in the pretty country towns we flock to at weekends with our minted copy of ‘Country Style’ under our arms. On the mainland there are many examples of restaurants & cafes thriving in the satellite towns around the capital cities. Having said this, there are also many whose rosy dream to open a ‘little place in the country’ has turned into the nightmare of cliché. A few antique shop items arranged by a Shabby-Chic hand entwined with a rustic haute barnyard menu does not always a successful business make. Opening a business in a country town appealing to the aesthetics of a moneyed & leisurely city clientele is usually avoided by the very people who live in the town. In other words, your livelihood when the holiday season is over. They also have to deal with the biggest problem that I hear about all the time, finding staff., we in Tas are not alone with this issue.
Here in winter, people hibernate; often they just don’t go out. Also there really isn't a lot of money in rural Tasmania & the South is no different. It’s not too long a bow to draw to say that for many, the discretionary dollar is just not spent on meals outside the home. Take a look at the main drags of Kettering, Snug, Margate, Huonville, Cygnet, Geeveston and Franklin et all at 8pm on a winter’s night for a reality check!
Until we get a massive population increase I feel it will remain so.
With all this in mind, it takes a very confident person(s) to open a restaurant or cafe with this as a backdrop. That’s why we should support those brave enough to have a go but also let them know when they haven't got it right.

Why don’t you do a Channel & Huon Crawl?

Blue= new ownership
Red=closed

Start at Brookfield Vineyard, on to Pear Ridge, stop off at Seafood De Mayne, drop in to The Farm Gate Cafe in Kettering, follow up at The Mermaid café also at Kettering, then on to Peppermint Bay, followed by Fleurty’s then on to Pecora at Grandvewe, spin around go up the Woodbridge Hill to the café at Hartzview Wine Centre then on to Cygnet. At Cygnet go to The Lotus Eaters, The Bottom Pub, Red Velvet Lounge, Divinge & The Apple tree cafe. Now flat foot it to Huonville, go over the river toward Geeveston. Go to Café Kyari, turn around toward Franklin & visit the Aqua Grill, Franklin Woodfired Pizza & the new Turkish café. Petty Sessions, Melaka & the Franklin Gallery Café. Back in Huonville go to The Huon Manor, Café Moto, Granny Lews Organics, The Boathouse, Home Hill Winery & DJ’s.
They’re all there having a go.

Despite these places closing a few newbies have popped up. The old Post Office in Dover(mostly pizzas) Masaaki for sushi in Geeveston, The Lady Jane Franklin hotel in Franklin & Great Southern Pizza in Cradoc.

The first Tassie Food Bloggers meet up

On this eve of I think, what will be the first meeting of Tasmanian food bloggers, I am very curious as to what to expect.

I am hoping it will be revealed why other people are compelled to put themselves & their opinions out there into the ether on a topic that is always going to be fundamentally subjective & thus attract a differing of opinion. It takes a fair amount of courage to stick your neck out & put your views into the public arena especially when much of the response is often anonymous. Bloggers are aware of this double edged sword yet still many forge on despite it. This is not to say that negative comments don’t at times sting & occasionally their disapproving words fatally wound a blogger who calls it a day, discouraged & licking their wounds. Its pretty difficult to adequately prepare oneself for the extremes of opinion & the way that it is delivered, often in very personal terms. It can be quite distressing. Yes you can delete such comments but this skirts around the issue of censorship & many bloggers feel that there is way too much of this already happening in old media. You just hope people will play fair.

Speaking for myself, I do it because I enjoy writing & I like reading, however I don’t get enough time to exercise the latter as frequently as I’d like to. My blog happens to be mostly food related but I occasionally delve into other areas.

So why do people blog? I have a theory or two.

I think the immediacy of it is very attractive & sits comfortably with the notion of instant gratification that some of us have enthusiastically embraced.

Then there’s the chance to get your voice across to a wider audience that pre the net, was almost impossible for the everyday person. Posting bears witness to the fact that you are alive, somewhere out there, living, observing, questioning & thinking.

It also connects to the notion that we all like to be anti establishment to a degree or in the least that we are not part of the herd. A fair amount of blogs are devoted to de-bunking the conventional message that printed or other media convey. Many bloggers though ignore the paradox that their message is just another version of the multiple truths that are out there.

In my case, the self gratification I enjoy as I post is almost onanistic in its own sad & guiltily self indulgent way, perhaps meant to be enjoyed in a room with the curtains drawn & followed by a melancholics remorse! Each post a ‘little death’! Just kidding!

Having said this, to me blogging is a very solitary activity. This is also ironic because the very nature of writing, in this case about food, has bought me into the orbits of many other similarly inclined people.

Anyway enough of my blogging self analysis, are there any questions you might like to convey to the group of Tassie Food bloggers? I'm sure it would add to the days discussions.

Why I left you in the shite-redux

In the spirit of 'keeping it real' & living 'La vida Loca' as it were, I'm in a re-posting kind a mood. Thank you for noticing, yes my style has moved on, but these posts are still around to haunt me...Nearly fours years on has not dulled fully its venom. Its about the lame excuses people make when they let you down.

In that last posting really let of some steam & I feel better for it! Stephen got me thinking when he enquired what were some of the excuses used & boy it bought back a few painful memories! Having said that, enough time has passed to make me feel less violated & I can actually see the good in people, er mostly.

This excuse is usually delivered by a distant relative or long suffering & embarrassed parent. “Sorry he has had to leave the country-immediately so he won’t be able to come in today-or ever”. Like is this guy a secret agent? Is he wanted by Interpol?

This one plays the biggest sympathy card. The person usually phones & tearfully explains that their Grandma, who they were incredibly close to, has carked it. This means that they will not be able to come back to work,....ever. I know of one person who must not have any relatives left on the planet, they've dropped like flies it seems.

Then there is the ‘Mystery Illness Syndrome’. I won’t be able to come back to work because I have an extremely rare case of Zimbabwe Fever. How did you get this in Chigwell I am left asking? Often though, they bob up one week later in a cushy nine to five job.

Then there is the pedigreed slouch with the impressive CV. If they do a runner it usually has something to do with the fact that they ‘can’t compromise their standards’ or other such nonsense. They realise that they can’t ponce around for long before they are asked to cook something or do service. Often they end up looking way out of their depth, so in order to save face, they bail.

Oh, then there is the Calamity Jane. I have mentioned this person in a previous post. They have one inexplicable disaster after another requiring more & more time off until they just vanish, who knows maybe abducted by aliens, who knows it’s possible?

Then there is the ‘Personality clash’. I will not work another minute with so & so. It is hard not to hear these words & think of a petulant child refusing to do chores. This one is one of the most lame excuses & almost always used when an individual is not coping, out their depth & in over their head.

The Druggie or Alco. Against your better judgement you will hire one of these when you are cornered. You know that one day Mr X will have vanished without trace & Miss Y is still coming down from a bender. Often I expect to see their pictures in the Missing Persons list on the Cop shop wall, at least that might explain something?

The, ‘I ate something bad’, excuse. Sure we all get food poisoning from time to time. How many dodgy Kebabs has the late night shop in Sandy Bay been responsible for? OK a couple of days off at best-but leaving work over it? Talk about Kebab-aphobia? More like work-aphobia!

I am resigning, effective immediately, due to a broken heart. My girlfriend went to Thailand & had an affair with someone. Truth ne known, she never left the airport, she shagged the Taxi driver on the way to Club Med & I am devastated. What the?!

Then there are those who just don’t give a shit. They will not even be bothered to concoct a story yet alone hang around to deliver it. Whatever!

I could go on but fell free to add your examples. gg