A recent text thread with a friend went sort of like this:
- Friend: What are you making for dinner these days? I am so tired of burrito bowls.
- Me: Well, we’re having burrito bowls for dinner. 🫠
We haven’t hit a super picky eating stage yet, or at least, my toddler isn’t fussy about the things they eat or don’t eat. When we go out to eat, I’m almost always surprised about what they end up eating—on spring break, they refused chicken fingers but ate all of their green beans one night at dinner, which hey, I’ll take it—which is why I’m so excited about this week’s guest: Hillary Dixler Canavan, from The New Family Table.
We are only sometimes in the picky eaters club but I mean, I’m not going to get my toddler to eat dinner with any of their foods touching anytime soon. And I’ve been reading Hillary’s work for years—she spent a decade as an editor at Eater where she led the annual Best New Restaurants list and authored the publication’s debut cookbook.
Hillary Dixler Canavan on Travel with Toddlers
Hillary and her family in Pasadena, CA.
Eater is one of the few publications I actually check and read regularly. (I had the honor of getting my first byline there back in 2020; it’s still one of my favorite things I’ve ever written.) Dining out to eat used to be almost a hobby, hitting any new restaurant that hit the Eater Essential List. I still use some of Hillary’s tricks from this piece, which has opened up a ton of interesting meals:
Ask: What’s the staff really excited about right now? At a good restaurant, you’ll often find that the staff are the restaurant’s most enthusiastic fans: If there’s something exciting to the folks who are the most familiar with what happens at the restaurant day in and day out, chances are you’ll find it exciting too.
Now, of course, I’ve got a little one and she does too. I reserve exciting dining opportunities for date nights, which are so much $$$ with babysitters that they’re few and far between. I end up bringing my toddler along more often than not—obviously we’re not going to a place with petit-four sized meals or anything with foam anymore—which is why I’m excited to bring you Hillary’s dining expertise. If you haven’t yet subscribed to her substack, and you’re looking for recipes/food content with kids in mind, take a look here.
Here’s how Hillary approaches eating out with her daughter:
How has eating out changed for you since having kids?
“Dining out completely changed for me after having a baby. When my daughter was born, I was Eater’s restaurant editor, which included traveling around the country doing restaurant scouting for the annual Best New Restaurant list. Dining out for me wasn’t simply a matter of going where I wanted to go; there were restaurants I had to go to for research.
My daughter was born in the first few months of COVID-19, however, so we didn’t end up taking her to a restaurant before she was 1. To celebrate her first birthday, we took her out to her very first restaurant — a local spot with a large outdoor patio and pizza.”
Hillary’s daughter ate the pan tomate, clams, and some crackers to help her wait for food to come out while on a scouting meal to Mabel’s Gone Fishing in San Diego (which went on to be one of Eater’s 2022 Best New Restaurants.)
“Now that that kind of travel and dining aren’t part of my professional responsibilities to quite the same degree, dining out together is much more about where we want to go together as a family.”
What makes a “family-friendly” restaurant? It can be hard, especially while traveling, to figure out whether a place is going to have a high chair or not, for example. How do you pick a spot for going out to eat?
“Because of COVID-19, I could not bring my daughter to a restaurant before she was 1. That was something that made me profoundly sad at the time — I had so looked forward to taking her to our local haunts while I was on parental leave — and still makes me sad now. We were so cloistered.
Once we started taking her out, we focused on restaurants that had outdoor seating and that served her favorite foods. We didn’t start experimenting with trying new foods at restaurants until she had the rules and routines of dining out under her belt. We’re very lucky that she loves going out to eat, just like her mom.
There are a few key indicators that a restaurant (even one you’re finding on the fly) is kid-friendly:
- They have a kids section on the menu
- You see kids there already
When my daughter was younger, I made every effort to sit outside. Young toddlers drop food, it happens. They make noise — even when you work with them to encourage quiet voices. Being outside takes a lot of pressure off.”
What are your go-to strategies for entertaining toddlers/babies at a restaurant so you also get to eat?
“With the littlest ones, I try my best to keep them out of the high chair before food arrives. In my experience, the high chair has a time limit. If there are two adults available, I recommend someone take the little one on a walk nearby, or in the restaurant’s waiting area, or wherever you can get. Get some wiggles out before strapping them in.
My other go-to’s for table entertainment are the usuals: Coloring, little cars, lift-the-flap books. I personally don’t like screens at the table (at home or out), so I try to find things that keep their hands and minds busy.”
The restaurant gear Hillary doesn’t leave home without…
“My number one piece of gear is bringing a water bottle/water cup from home, especially for the younger toddlers. We’re talking whatever can handle being dropped, tipped, and turned upside down without leaking or spilling. I do not trust the plastic cups available at restaurants to cut it with a determined toddler. I would sometimes bring an empty one, since my daughter got very excited about having ice cubes from the restaurant in her weighted straw cup.
When she was under 2, I would often bring one of her silicon plate-bowl-mats to restaurants with me, too, so she’d have a familiar plate that couldn’t be easily flipped. And a silicon bucket bib for the littlest ones, so that as little food as possible ends up on the floor as they work on self-feeding. (Editor’s note: We still bring this even as an older toddler! Saves a lot of apologetic floor cleanup.)
Now that my daughter is 4.5, we don’t typically need any specific gear. When I am really on the ball, I’ll remember to bring her trainer chopsticks when we go out to restaurants where chopsticks make sense, but even then that’s a nice-to-have not a need-to-have.”
And Hillary’s favorite kid-friendly restaurant is…
So fancy! Love when littles get all glammed up.
“The first answer that comes to mind is Din Tai Fung. Aside from the fact that dumplings are in my daughter’s top 3 favorite foods, the Din Tai Fung team is just rock solid. They are completely unfazed by kids. I once saw a child taking rice off their plate and just dropping it directly onto the floor (luckily for my stress levels it wasn’t my kid). And when I tell you the servers didn’t so much as blink twice at what was going down.
For Valentine’s Day when my daughter was 2.5, my mom and I took her to Laduree in Beverly Hills for tea and macarons. They sat her in what we immediately called “the princess high chair” and she had such a blast being fancy and eating yummy tea sandwiches and macarons. The staff let her drink her herbal tea from a real ceramic cup, too.” 🫖
Your toddler might surprise you!
Thank you, Hillary! I love the idea of high tea—I spend quite a bit of time sitting cross-legged on our living room floor sipping from a tiny teacup anyway, so I bet my toddler would love the pageantry of it.
I have been pleasantly surprised that my toddler meets the fanciness of a place, if that makes sense. They’re much more likely to act out at a fast-food place than when there’s that reverent hush, white tablecloth feeling. (It helps that we usually pick places with chef’s tables or open kitchens, so we have built-in entertainment.) I’m not saying that it’s always perfect—we’ve done plenty of scarfed-down meals where one partner goes on a walk and the other eats alone—but oh, when it works? The good-food-good-company glow just hits.
Thanks for being here.
The best part about dining out? Absolutely zero dishes to do. And on vacation, it gets better from there. My favorite part of arrival day is sitting down for lunch after a long flight and you can see the ocean. Or the city. It just feels like woah, we’re in a new place!
Last year we stayed at the JW Marriott St. Maarten (on points) and I’m still thinking about that mahi-mahi burger with mango salsa and a plate crowded with french fries. Each morning as a treat we’d swim up to the bar and order water with cut fruit in it and watch the waves beyond. Our toddler crushed a cheeseburger and garlic green beans 4/6 nights for dinner. The only problem is now our toddler demands bread and butter to start every meal. Can’t blame ‘em!
Yum,
Kayla
If you liked this post, please consider supporting my work. I’m just a mom in the thick of the toddler years trying to create core memories for our whole family while minimizing meltdowns—I sincerely hope this helps you do the same.
This post was originally published on Travel with Toddlers. Subscribe for more real-talk travel advice, toddler-friendly itineraries, and tried-and-true gear recommendations.
