The idea seems so brilliant that it's kind of amazing it isn't more widespread: upscale restaurant joins forces with nearby cafe to offer a relaxing, high cuisine meal to the parents and safe, fun childcare for the kids. Where do we sign up?
Chambar Belgian Restaurant in Vancouver, BC, offers exactly such a service to its be-kidded patrons. It sounded too good to be true, so Globe and Mail writer Fiona Morrow decided to check it out firsthand...
From Morrow's review:
Karri Schuermans and her chef husband, Nico, own Chambar and its daytime sibling, Café Medina. They noticed a gap in the market and decided to provide a service for affluent parents with no reliable babysitting network. "We have two young children, and find that it's not worth taking them to the restaurants we want to go to," explains Ms. Schuermans. "We just can't relax."
For $30 per child, parents can enjoy their moule frite and lamb tajine in peace, while at the next-door cafe, their young children (ages 3 to 7) play with cool European toys and chow down on pasta and waffles, under the watchful eyes of professional nannies.
Chamber offers this service -- called "Freedom Night" -- every Thursday evening between 6 and 8 pm, and it seems to be a success:
We certainly have a very relaxed dinner; nary a thought about the boys crosses our minds as we tuck into an excellent lamb tajine and tasty five-spice-rubbed duck breast washed down with a bottle of red. Our only quibble would be that two hours goes by a bit too swiftly.
What do you think? Is this a service you'd use? Do any restaurants in your 'hood have innovative approaches (other than Playland) to catering to families?
Read the full article here.
(Photo via Chambar)
Copyright © 2008 Apartment Therapy
All new parents have this idea. Seriously.
Some places do have a built-in kiddie entertainment area, and family centers are popping up ever so slowly. I know of a couple in the SF Bay Area.
view stickyricemama's profile
You know what ... we just got back from Vancouver a few weeks ago and I was pleasantly surprised at how kid-friendly yet hip it is. Our lodge/resort on Vancouver Island was lovely yet had a full-scale playground for kids (not to mention amazing woods and beaches); the Vancouver airport has a climber area for tots; one of the breakfast restaurants we ate at also had a kid area; and the ferry between Vancouver and Vancouver Island had a neat kids room. I know this is the trend everywhere, but everything was so clean and not tacky at all -- I ate it up!
view katey m's profile
What bothers me about this is that these families don't know any young people who can babysit and the lack of community that that signals. Vancouver's a lovely city, but not very friendly or open - something like this, although it sounds great, just perpetuates that problem. It looks "kid-friendly," but it seems more kid-friendly to get to know other families and people in your community and help each other out. Seems like a gimmick.
view emilykristin's profile
I have never met anyone who has been to Vancouver and say that the people are not very friendly or open. The service Chambar provides is for "affluent" parents as stated above. The rest of us do use babysitters.
view bizmom's profile
Not a gimmick.
There are actually parents like me who prefer to take their kids with and dine in family restaurants. We don't dine out at the places we used to in SF, and that's fine with us. However, if there were something like this locally, I'd try it.
It has nothing to do with lack of community. I'm in a large moms' club with in-a-pinch, nights out, and babysitting co-op.
view stickyricemama's profile
I would so totally try this! I agree that while getting a babysitter might be the first, best option, sometimes we (gasp!) neglect to plan ahead, or (horrors!) all of our good babysitters are unavailable. Or maybe even you're visiting a cool city and don't know anyone there, but would still like to eat great food and have a date. That happens to us a lot on vacations; we find ourselves unable to take advantage of things we otherwise would because it's not so kid-friendly. We have taken our three to some decently swanky eateries, but even though they're well-behaved, we make a bit of a spectacle for other diners, and it's not all that relaxing for us either!
view adriennep's profile
i hadn't thought about the vacation aspect, so I can see that. Bizmom, I assume you live in Vancouver? I live in Vancouver myself, and I'm surprised you haven't heard anyone say it's a stand-offish city. Have you heard of the OK buttons? The creator designed them to encourage strangers to talk to each other here b/c Vancouver is the least outwardly friendly city he'd lived in! So... it concerns me when I hear that the service is designed for "affluent parents with no reliable babysitting network." They aren't just assuming that people haven't planned ahead or are on vacation, they're assuming that people don't know anyone well enough to watch their children - a definite issue in Vancouver and increasingly elsewhere.
view emilykristin's profile
I've lived in Vancouver for twelve years, and I've generally found it to be a friendly place. From my perspective, the relative friendliness or unfriendliness of the city isn't the reason for a service like this: it's the fact that so many people who live here come from somewhere else. All my fellow parent friends are from elsewhere, like me, which means none of us have extended family to rely on for babysitting. And while in theory we'd all be happy to babysit for one another, in actuality we're all so busy that I, for one, am loathe to ask someone else to take on the added task of babysitting for me.
Our paid "babysitting network" consists of two people, who are both great and therefore highly sought after and not always available when we'd like. And given the fact that babysitting here costs upward of $8-10 an hour, paying $30 for a service like Chambar's doesn't seem so expensive. (For the record, my husband and I aren't exactly "affluent." We've eaten at Chambar a couple of times, so obviously we do okay, but well-off? Not quite.)
view TammyE's profile