Recommendations for baby friendly restaurants

[Anonymous]

Any recommendations for baby friendly restaurants in DC? We just had our first child and enjoy going out to dinner.

[Anonymous]

Go early (5-6pm)
Be ready to leave if your child starts to cry/fuss/scream- one parent takes child out the other pays and boxes up food.

The Hamilton (downtown)
Surfside (Glover Park)
TownHall (Glover Park), better for brunch
Pete's New Haven (AU Park)

[Anonymous]

Any restaurant. If the child was just born, it's literally just a blob in the car seat. No one will notice or care.

[Anonymous]

Any Mexican restaurant, the loud noise put DS right to sleep when he was a baby, it was better than the white noise maker we at home!

Eat out all you can now, it gets really hard from 10 months - 18 months when they are mobile but can't be reasoned with.

[Anonymous]

Just pick the loudest in your selection of favorite restaurants. The sound lulls them to sleep and if they start crying you will bother fewer diners. Go early. I always preferred booths instead of free standing tables because I could place the car seat right next to me.

[Anonymous]

Booths make nursing easier. I was terrified to do it in a restaurant but quickly found out that crying baby gets you a ton of stares but happy nursing baby inside a booth no one will look at.

Still I would avoid the best special occasion type restaurants because it is hard to listen to a baby cry if you just shelled out bucks to pay a sitter for your ten year anniversary dinner.

[Anonymous]

The list of restaurants that are baby-friendly is much much longer than the list of ones which aren't.

Start with somewhere close to home and keep your expectations low. Have an exit plan if things go pear-shaped--if the kid starts screaming or has a blowout or whatever, and you have to leave, one of you takes the baby and goes; the other gets the food to go and settles up the check.

[Anonymous]

Oh, and Clycle's (Chinatown) has a spot to park strollers.

[Anonymous]

As long as the child is under a year, I think you can take them anywhere as long as you are done by 7pm.

Once they are a year, I think the PPs have excellent suggestions about having an exit plan and how to use it.

The only exception I would say is at a bar or in the bar area of a restaurant. After 5pm, there should be no babies or kids at the bar. There is nothing more irritating to adult diners who wish to eat at the bar than seats being occupied by kids.

Yeah, Two Amys, I'm looking at you.

[Anonymous]

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As long as the child is under a year, I think you can take them anywhere as long as you are done by 7pm.

Once they are a year, I think the PPs have excellent suggestions about having an exit plan and how to use it.

The only exception I would say is at a bar or in the bar area of a restaurant. After 5pm, there should be no babies or kids at the bar. There is nothing more irritating to adult diners who wish to eat at the bar than seats being occupied by kids.

Yeah, Two Amys, I'm looking at you.

6:00 or 6:30 is the latest that we felt comfortable. Most kids get to cranky not eating by then anyway.