Restaurants that ban children? Really?

• qwrrrty
• Not everyone thinks that children in restaurants are adorable.

My late father hated taking his four young children to restaurants. But he did it anyway.

For one thing, he believed that the only serious way that youngsters truly developed a sense of behaving properly in a restaurant dining room was to actually eat in a restaurant dining room. We did not eat in the kind of places that we now call “kid-friendly” (although my parents were always relieved to find a Howard Johnson’s restaurant on the highway, because they did not trust little “Mom and Pop” diners – too many of them had unspeakably dirty bathrooms).

As a waiter, I never minded waiting on families with small children (although the post-meal cleanup could be daunting). Not everyone can afford a baby sitter, you know? That’s why I was sort of reeling when I read about a sushi restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia, banning all children from the premises. Yes, the combination of sushi and toddlers probably isn’t a great one, but is it all that preferable to eat a California roll in a child-free environment?