When I was a kid, my family rarely went out to eat.
Dining out wasn't a big thing way back then, and even if it had been, I can't imagine my family would have gone out very often. Why pay a restaurant when we could rely on my mother making three meals a day, seven days a week, pretty much from scratch? The only frozen meal we ever had was an occasional chicken pot pie. Probably when the little Banquet pot pies were on sale, ten for a buck.
On occasion, my parents did go out to dinner with friends, but these were grownup only events. Saturday night. My parents dressing up: my father in a suit, my mother in her good dress. We were happy to get the swizzle sticks they brought home.
We ate out as a family once a year, during the summer, heading to the Fox Lounge on Route 9 for open-face steak sandwiches and salad. Before we switched to the Fox Lounge, our annual dinner out was at Major's, a red-sauce Italian place, also on Route 9, but in the opposite direction.
Other than that, eating out was such a rare event, I could probably catalogue every time I was in a restaurant that wasn't a Friendly's until I was halfway through high school.
Even when the family was on vacation, we didn't eat out. Wherever we were vacationing - which would be either Chicago or the Cape for a couple of weeks - my mother cooked. Some vacation for her! (If we were taking the train to Chicago, my mother packed sandwiches for Friday dinner on the Lake Shore Limited overnighter. We did eat breakfast in the dining car. When we drove to Chicago, we picknicked, with breakfast on day two at whatever motel we were staying at. If we were on the Cape for our every-other-year there, my mother cooked every meal. No clam shack for us!)
But one thing I'm 100% sure of is that, when the Rogers family ate out, there were no kids making a lot of noise and/or running around the restaurant disturbing the peace of other diners and the staff.
I don't remember any scenes of any unruly kids back in the day. (Even Protestants, whom I always imagined got away with all sorts of terrible behavior.)
It just wasn't done.
O tempora, o mores...
Last summer, I ate with my brother and niece one Saturday night at a very upscale, decidedly non-red-sauce Italian restaurant in my neighborhood. A few times during the meal, Caroline and eye commented that it was fortunate that her father is hard of hearing, as this spared him having to put up with the LOUD MOUTH KID (4 or 5 years old) at the table next to us.
Sure, the kid may have been an obnoxious, spoiled little brat of a prince, but I blame the parents.
They were out with another couple, and all any of them were interested in was chatting with each other or checking their phones. Not once was there any attempt to engage or distract this child, who was trying to attract their attention by loudly monologue-ing something or other, or singing some off-tune tune. Most of the time, the adults were blithely oblivious (or feigning blithe oblivion) to the noise this kid was making.
At least he wasn't running around knocking over the waitstaff.
Which was apparently happening pretty regularly at Nettie's House of Spaghetti, a New Jersey eatery that recently came to a decision about hosting kiddos. Here's what they posted on their Facebook page:
We love kids. We really, truly, do. But lately, it’s been extremely challenging to accommodate children at Nettie’s. Between noise levels, lack of space for high chairs, cleaning up crazy messes, and the liability of kids running around the restaurant, we have decided that it’s time to take control of the situation. This wasn’t a decision that was made lightly, but some recent events have pushed us to implement this new policy. As of March 8, the day we return from our winter break, we will no longer allow children under 10 to dine in the restaurant.
We know that this is going to make some of you very upset, especially those of you with very well-behaved kids, but we believe this is the right decision for our business moving forward.
Thank you for understanding.
Based on the comments their post received, Nettie's Spaghetti met with plenty of understanding. And plenty of vituperation from those not willing or able to be understanding.
Sure, Nettie's had a few alternatives.
They could have continued to let kids run around, creating mayhem. (C.f., "recent events.") Which would have meant continuing to bother patrons looking for a nice quiet dinner, and staff hoping to be able to deliver a bunch of orders without getting knocked to the ground.
They could have restricted the hours they served families with kids. Which would have forewarned other diners when they were eating at Nettie's at risk of commotion, but which wouldn't have done much to help staff members who didn't want to be mowed down by scampering kiddos.
They could have spoken with the parents of the offending families, asking them to keep their children under control or leave. Which likely would have done no good whatsoever, given that the types of parents allowing their kids to act out and go haywire probably wouldn't take all that kindly to being told that their kids were behaving badly.
So kid-free Nettie's Spaghetti it is!
When I first came across this story, my reaction was "Mamma Mia, what's a joint called Nettie's House of Spaghetti doing banning kids?" If ever there were ever a name screaming families welcome to eat all the red sauce fare they want,
And their FB tagline - Red sauce joint serving elevated nostalgia - would do nothing to dispel this notion.
Shades of Major's on Route 9, with its red-checkered table cloth and grinning chef neon sign.
But it seems as if Nettie's House of Spaghetti has been moving away from that image for a while, starting with changing their name to just plain Nettie's.
They still gotta change their name on Facebook. And maybe that tag line. But other than that...
Personally, I wouldn't be happy in a world where kids were banned - even from restaurants where I want peace and quiet. As long as the kids are behaving themselves. (Pass given to crying babies or melt-downers whose parents whisk them away once they realize they're creating a disturbance.) But who can blame a small restaurant with some crappy clientele from just saying no to unruly kids?
Let the Cheesecake Factories and spaghetti houses cater to the kid demographic.
This is, of course, unfair to families whose children know how to behave and who should be afforded the opportunity to dine out at a nice restaurant. The families who know enough to engage with their children and/or make sure the kids have some sort of something or other to entertain them. (Sadly, the era of a child being content with a paper placemat to color on with the red-green-blue-yellow crayons in the skimpy little package the restaurant provides is long over.) The families who know that sometimes the most well-behaved kid has a little meltdown, and who know enough to take that otherwise well-behaved kid out of the restaurant until they calm down.
But there are plenty of other places to take your kids. Just. Not. Netties.
I hope that things work out for Nettie's. Buona fortuna. If I ever find myself in Tinton Falls, NJ, I'll be by.
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