For parents of a very young baby, it’s difficult to eat out at a restaurant, because babies have a habit of waking up and crying, or needing to be fed, just as your food arrives.
This makes going to a restaurant a challenging experience, and if the baby is not feeling well and needing constant attention, well nobody gets to eat their food, let alone enjoy it.
The buffet restaurant is a good solution for many parents, since you can eat at your own pace, and go up and get food one at a time, with the other parent looking after the baby.
As well as dining out in the evening, many buffet restaurants serve breakfast at the weekend, and this can give both parents the opportunity to eat a good breakfast without having to prepare or cook anything at home.
The mother of a young baby has by this time had enough of being just “somebody’s Mommy”, and stuck at home looking after the baby, so a chance to go out and eat is a welcome break at the weekend.
When my daughter was very young, we used to go to breakfast on a Sunday at Old Country Buffet, and if you timed it right it wasn’t too crowded and you could easily get a table.
The nice thing is that buffet restaurants cater to families with children and babies, and so although you don’t get the peace and tranquility that you do with fancier restaurants, your baby isn’t likely to make such a disturbance either, at least not relative to the others eating there.
Usually it’s possible to leave the baby in their car seat, and to put this on the table, so that one or other of the parents can rock the baby gently while you are eating. Should the baby wake up, it’s often easy to rock them back to sleep this way as well.
Then the parents can go up and get plates of food, one at a time, leaving someone to look after the baby, so both of you can eat without the food getting cold,
If the baby needs to be fed, you can usually get hot water to warm up a bottle, or find a booth where the mother can discreetly breast-feed.
With a buffet restaurant there is no rush, and you can take your time eating, having a little at a time if necessary if the baby is restless.
For older babies, there is plenty of food that they can eat at a breakfast buffet, from oatmeal, pancakes, fresh fruit, scrambled egg, sausage, hash browns and so on.
I think many people will agree that this is far better than trying to eat at a regular restaurant, where there is often a lack of facilities for taking a baby.
Some parents shy away from going out to restaurants with a young baby because of the disruption and the difficulty in eating their food while it’s fresh, but as well as buffet restaurants being very easy to dine at with a baby, it’s also good for a baby to get used to being taken to restaurants and other public places.
