guess who isn’t coming to dinner.
If you’re chagrined at sharing your favorite fine dining spot with tastemakers and their toddlers, a D.C. restaurant has dared to draw the line and ask that parents leave their little ones behind. A new sushi spot opening in Alexandria, Virginia’s Del Ray neighborhood is being touted as “adults only”, but the salacious sounding policy is actually getting praise for its measure to create a peaceful environment for both parents and those without children alike.
“We thought parents just needed a place to give it a break, like an adult clubhouse,” said owner Mike Anderson. Of one of his four other family-friendly establishments, Mango Mike’s, he said that come dinner time, “there must be 50 kids in that joint. It’s pandemonium.”
“We ran it by some parents that had kids and I would say eight out of 10 thought it was a great idea. They said ‘You’re on to something here,’” he told The Washington Post.
The community took to the Del Ray Patch news blog to debate the project, drawing 112 comments in a mere fourteen short hours. In an ironic twist on the topic of immature behavior in public spaces, according to The Huffington Post, editor Drew Hansen had to close the thread to comments because the discussion got too out of hand.
Actually, Anderson is far from the first restaurateur to try wean parents off of dining with their wee ones. The Post notes that a few years ago, a bar in Brooklyn’s trendy Park Slope neighborhood posted, “Please, No Strollers” much to the dismay of hipster parents and the delight of those sick of climbing over strollers for their PBR. An enterprising restaurant outside of Pittsburgh also received attention and positive feedback for it’s no children policy in 2011, making six years old the minimum age for admittance.
Does enforcing dinner without children, yours or anyone else’s, sound appealing or appalling? — Casandra Armour
