Fine Dining, Family Style

When I told Daniel that we were going to eat dinner at a restaurant on Friday night, his response was “there’s gonna be football on the TV!”  I suppose that gives you a sense of the type of restaurant we normally frequent as a family.

But this was different. This was Aura.  A real restaurant. With ambiance and a wine list.  The kind you’d feel out of place in jeans.  And we were taking the kids.  And it was great.

So, I got an email about this event through my blog (This is why you make your contact info available, people! Sometimes you hear about cool stuff!).  The restaurant puts on “Fine Dining, Family-Style” about once a month.  For December, they were doing it twice, once for Hannukah and once for Christmas.  There was a separate kids’ menu and parents’ menu, in this case populated with delicious traditional holiday items.  And at one end of the space, they had taken out the tables and filled half the room with toys, games, and a train table. Heck, I think there was even a TV playing some Dora.

We had a great time.  OK, so the kids were having too much fun to come sit at the table and eat unfamiliar (though delicious) foods.  But they were enjoying themselves, and M and I were able to have a nice dinner together.

I have only two regrets.  The first is that I should have asked if they could have food from the “regular” kids’ menu (chicken fingers and the like) instead of trying to convince them to eat latkes (and they were awesome latkes, they didn’t know what they were missing).  Another family did that, and M and I slapped our foreheads wondering why we didn’t think of that.

The other regret is that, when the kids found their little bags of gelt, we let them hold onto the bags in the car. Only to return home and find a tightly-clenched chocolate disaster in each child’s lap. Awesome.

Seriously, though.  Boston-area folks, I strongly recommend this for the 2-ish and up set. Have the adventure, get a nice dinner, let the kids play.  It was lovely.