France Has Some of the World’s Greatest Restaurants. The Children’s Menu Has a Different Relationship to This Standard.
PARIS — The family-friendly Paris restaurant — the establishment that has made provision for children through a dedicated children’s menu, elevated seating, and a noise tolerance that the fine dining establishment does not extend — serves two concurrent dining populations whose needs are genuinely different: the adult who wants a meal that reflects French culinary culture and the child whose relationship with French culinary culture is still being developed and currently operates primarily through the chicken nugget as reference standard. Both populations are in the restaurant. Both must be served. The restaurant has chosen its clientele.
The Menu Gap
The children’s menu in a Paris restaurant is typically: a main course from a small selection (steak haché, pasta, chicken breast), a dessert (ice cream or mousse au chocolat), and a drink. These are foods the child will eat. They are not foods that represent the restaurant’s ambition or the kitchen’s capability. The kitchen that produces an excellent blanquette de veau for the adults produces the steak haché for the child with equal professionalism and equal indifference to the steak haché’s relationship to the blanquette. The child eats the steak haché. The adults have the blanquette. Both tables are content. According to France’s restaurant federation’s family dining data, restaurants with children’s menus report 40% higher table turnover than those without. The children’s menu serves the restaurant’s economics as well as the children’s nutrition. France has made peace with both.
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