Why do children's menus exist?

[TankFlyBossWalk]

Why don't restaurants provide smaller portions of the grub on the main menu?

You really need to ask?

personally, I heart children's menus.

I so wish more restaurants would do a child-sized portion of an adult meal. It's not so bad now ds is 9, as he can eat a bigger portion, but when he was younger it was quite annoying. He doesn't mind eating something like fish fingers, but would always much rather have had whatever dh or I were eating.

Because some children like different things to adults.

Why heart children's menus? I don't get it.

Actually children's menus would be ok if they were just smaller portions and maybe a bit more mild in the case of very hot, spicy dishes. Other than that I can't see why you would need them. Don't most families all eat the same food, once you have got past the milk/weaning stage?

The children's menus are always full of crap too. Nuggets and chips etc, etc.

Of course, if a dish included alcohol that wouldn't be suitable, but otherwise children could just eat what we do. A lot easier all round!

right back at you.

DS is a picky bastard. He won't eat pasta, rice or pizza. He won't eat potatoes in any form other than mash or chips. He likes sausages and the childrens menu means he gets something he'll definitely eat.

I always loved that in Italy or Spain restaurants and cafes were ALWAYS willing to provide a 'piccolo' portion. I now will hazard a request here in the UK, but have often been refused and pointed to the kids menu

Ok Jareth, but isn't your DS in the minority? As SoMuch says, most families eat the same thing together, don't they?

If you are lucky enough to have a non-fussy eater, fine.

But for the rest of us, if you go out to eat, the idea is to have a nice relaxed enjoyable time, and bribing yelling at persuading a very reluctant three-year-old to take three bites of lasagne/fishcakes/goats cheese tart you have just paid £7.99 for is not my idea of a relaxing outing.... But most children will eat at least one of the plain fish/pasta/pizza etc options on the children's menu. And they usually get free ice-cream.

Some places do half-portions of the more grown-up things if you ask.

I see eating out as an opportunity to introduce DD to new foods. I don't want to give her something golden brown with chips and the obligatory peas or baked beans!

We don't eat the same thing together. Most nights my DC have to eat early because they have clubs. OH doesn't come home from work to later when it's too late for the kids to eat. Weekends we eat the same things together.

exexpat you say "for the rest of us" - are you suggesting that the majority of children are fussy eaters?

DiscoDaisy, but do your children eat similar meals to you and OH, even though you don't eat together?

Actually I'm not sure that's quite the case. It was more so when I was young (but I am hideously old!) but I do notice these days there is more expectation from parents that their children won't necessarily eat the same things as their parents.

I'm not sure why this is - when I was at primary school, nearly every child had school lunces apart from a few who went home for lunch. There was no choice of menu, but most children ate most of the stuff (there were a few things I didn't particularly like, but if I didn't eat it there wasn't anything else.) These days I would imagine that would be pretty unthinkable. But I don't know why/how things have changed.

We all the eat the same things at home, but it is majorly compromised by DD's fussiness. So we eat a lot of things that personally bore me senseless, and she eats a lot of stuff she doesn't really like. A children's menu allows us to choose a restaurant which may have nothing on the main menu that she would eat, but that does have stuff on the children's menu. All three of us get to eat stuff that we've personally chosen, and that we really LIKE for a change.

But I will admit that a lot of children's menus are crap, and I wish they would do better puddings, not boring bloody ice cream all the time.

Not always. I limit junk food to 2 nights a week which are normally the nights we have a quick turnaround. The meals they have are normally different to the ones OH and I have.

I have one incredibly fussy eater and one dustbin that will pack away anything. If there weren't childrens menus eating out would be difficult with the fussy one as while its a great opportunity to introduce new foods for the eats everything one, the other would go hungry.

There's no fun in a meal if one person doesn't eat.

When ds was too little to eat at the same time as us in the evenings (he needed to eat earlier) I would cook for us all in the evening. I would save a portion of the main meal, put it in the fridge, and the next day would reheat it for ds, with some freshly cooked veg. So he always had the same as us but a day later. The only exceptions would be if we were having something very spicy or something cheesy (ds was dairy intolerant when he was little).

When he was weaned he always had just ordinary fresh foods, so I guess that was what he was used to from an early age.

No, I wasn't saying it was necessarily the majority - just that some children aren't fussy eaters, but for the rest of us whose children are a bit fussy to some extent, children's menus can be a good thing.

And I would have to say that amongst my DCs friends under the age of around 10, the ones who will genuinely eat anything are in the minority. Some come round to tea and their parents say oh, yes, XX eats anything - but if I present them with some of our home staples, eg home-made veggie burgers, or stir-fried vegetables and tofu with rice, it suddenly becomes clear that actually they don't eat everything.

And I feel that restaurants aren't necessarily the best place to get small children to try new things, because you have to order one thing and stick to it. I find I have more success with giving them small portions of new things alongside more familiar meals.

OK, I'm genuinely curious - why do fussy eaters like chips, fish fingers and peas and the like, rather than other sorts of foods? I'm not having a dig, I just don't get it.

I'd be interested to know how many children are so fussy that they would have to eat that sort of food, compared with children who'd eat a wider variety.

Are you veggie exexpat?

i dont really look at the chil;drens menu for dd4. i look at everything, the ingrediants and if its suitable for her she can have it (dairy, egg and nut allergic). last week we split a portion of fish and chips with her, and she devoured the fish. but she loves most tomato pasta based dishes.

Its to discourage adults from cluttering up restaurants at lunchtime and spending £2.99 on a half sized portion when they can squeeze £7.99 out of them for more food than they really want. If its marketed as children's then generally adults won't order it. I would quite happily eat the children's menu from pizza express (think its £6.95) but I don't, I end up ordering adult size versions which come to about £15ish.