Bariatric! That’s the surgery my friend had. I knew I was totally wrong with what I said. Anyway, she had a nice little card from her doctor saying she could order off the child’s menu due to dietary restrictions or surgery or however it was worded. I realize that it’s still up to the restaurant if they want to accommodate her special circumstances, but she did have that.
What restaurants do you go to that require someone to eat everything that is served, or dine in a restaurant for that matter? As was said above, the food cost is only one of a multitude of costs incurred by the establishment. Sure you can ask to order off the kids menu, but if it is not acceptable to the restaurant then your choice is to deal with it or never go back. It is certainly not dooming someone to never eat out if they have bariatric surgery, they just have to either take the remainder home or have it thrown away.
To those who believe they are entitled to order from the kids menu: do you also believe you should be entitled to order off the senior menu?
If you have a smaller appetite, couldn’t you just order a salad or an appetizer or something instead of a larger meal? It seems like “small appetite” is just a proxy for “cheap” in some situations.
I think the word “entitled” is being thrown around a lot in this thread, and I don’t think there is any real consensus about what it means. I mean, it clearly has negative connotations, but I am not sure where the behavior people are frowning at begins.
Is it being “entitled” to ask, politely, if one may order off the Kid’s Menu and abide, without further discussion, to what they say?
Is it being “entitled” to order off the kids menu, and let it be the server’s problem to tell you if that’s not allowed?
Is it being “entitled” to try to order off the kids menu, and when not given that option, avoid that restaurant in the future because you can’t order what you’d prefer to eat?
Is it being “entitled” to have the private opinion that it’s silly to limit adults to the adults-only menu, but abide by the rules of anywhere you eat?
Is it being “entitled” to try to order off the kids menu, and when denied, leave without ordering anything because you don’t see anything else that appeals?
I mean, if someone insists on arguing with the manager about their right to order off the kids’ menu, sure, that’s entitled. If someone goes on a tirade about an establishment because they won’t let them order off of the kids menu, sure, that’s entitled. But I don’t see anyone here advocating those sorts of behaviors.
It’s “entitled” to answer “yes” to the question of whether adults should be allowed to order off the kids’ menu.
I’ve never seen a restaurant that has a “senior” menu that would restrict someone “underage” from ordering, and a lot of places I frequent have phased out the word senior in place of “for guests with smaller appetites.”
As for the “just get an appetizer or soup” argument, that only works in places where there are appetizers that aren’t all deep fried/fat laden, and soup that isn’t a salt bomb. Those categories on most American food menus are, when you look at the calories and portion sizes involved, often even more unhealthy than the desserts or the most “indulgent” entrees.
No.
Restaurants should be allowed to choose a business model in which they either allow, or do not allow, adults to order off the Kid’s Menu. If they want to, for example, offer deep discounts to kids to get their parents in the door, fine.
If the Adult’s Menu is inadequate, either because the portions are too large or because it fails to offer desired items from the Kid’s Menu, adult patrons should be allowed to dine elsewhere.
If the restaurant is not offering deep discounts to kids, then it would be stupid to not let adults order from the Kid’s Menu, so you could say they “should” allow it in the sense that they would be foolish not to. But if they do offer the discounts, they could very well be correct to conclude that allowing adults to take advantage of those discounts would hurt the bottom line, and if so in no sense could you say they “should” let that happen.
Salads generally aren’t a meal. And appetizers are generally not a meal, either. Now, some salads are meals, such as Cobb salad, or a chef’s salad. In too many places, though, a salad consists of lettuce and tomato, which really isn’t a meal. As for appetizers, most of them are deep fried, and are darned heavy. And again, I don’t consider deep fried mozzarella sticks to be much of a meal.
I just wish I had an option to order a smaller meal in more places. I usually just ask for a box when I order, and put two thirds of the meal in the box. But a lot of dishes don’t heat up well, and if I go somewhere after the meal, I might as well pitch those leftovers, because I don’t have a cool place to keep them. I don’t remember how hot it got today, but I know that it was over 100 in my car after I got back from shopping.
Do restaurants generally refuse you when you ask for smaller portions?
Is it entitled to order off the kids menu if the restaurant specifically allows it? Is it entitled to prefer to eat at places that do allow it?
I mean, it just seems to me that the term “kids menu” covers a wide variety of different set ups that each restaurant defines in their own way: there’s no Platonic Ideal of what a kids’ menu is, or is for, or who it is limited to.
Generally, if I ask if there are smaller meals available, either I’m told that they aren’t, or the server will suggest the senior menu. And I’m happy to order from the senior menu (and give the server a tip that’s appropriate for the larger meal). Senior menus are my FRIEND. I don’t want two pork chops, one is more than enough. I do want a couple of servings of vegetables, which I won’t get if I order an appetizer.
No it’s entitled to think you “should be able to order off the kids’ menu” regardless.
Kids menus and senior menus are typically offered at a discount. It’s entitled to think that you are entitled to a discount offered to somebody else.
No, yes, no, yes, no.
These three quotes show, in ascending order of entitlement, attitudes I don’t really like:
Restaurants don’t need to make allowances for people with small appetites; rather, those of us with small appetites need to take that into consideration when deciding where to eat. Whether your age makes a difference to the restaurant in its price-point is their concern, not yours; there’s no “should” about it. And people shouldn’t be able to order whatever they want from the menu; again, “should” is a problem.
If you figure that you’ll ask, and base your decision on their answer, that’s fine and well (as long, again, as you don’t put the wait staff in an ugly position). If you figure that they “should” give you a particular answer, however, that’s when you get into entitlement territory.
Do the people who think they should be able to order kid’s/senior meals from a menu when they don’t meet the requirements laid out by the restaurant also insist that they should be able to pay the kid’s/senior price at a buffet since they aren’t big eaters?
Kids menu items may be at a discount sufficient enough to make them loss leaders but senior menu items aren’t. It’s typically the exact same entrees from the regular menu with 1/2 or 3/4 of the meat for $1 or $2 less. Instead of 2 chicken breasts or pork chops with two sides, it’s 1 breast/chop. It’s a 6 oz. steak instead of an 8 oz. one. When you cost out the price of sides versus proteins (using menu prices for ordering sides a la carte) ordering from the senior menu is actually usually a ripoff when you do the math. Whenever practical, my tiny-appetite mother orders the full entree and like Lynn, just takes half the food home, then she has dinner for the next day waiting for her.
A buffet is obviously a different situation. You go into a buffet knowing you’re going to pay a set price no matter how much you eat. If you have a tiny appetite, if you’re still full from your last meal or you’ve had bariatric surgery, you know you’re not going to “get your money’s worth” at a buffet – unless the value, for you, is customizing your meal, or having a variety of different foods.
Fair enough. The counter-attitude I see here, though, is that somehow it’s cheap, or a scam, to order off the kids menu even with the restaurant’s complete blessing, which I find to be odd. The implication is that the person ordering off the child’s menu is somehow taking advantage of the restaurant. A person’s small appetite is not the restaurant’s problem, but the profit margin is not the diner’s problem, either. As long as there is no rudeness or deception involved, I can’t see any problem with it.
There may also be some confusion about the word “should”: I am meaning it as “Ideally, a restaurant should . . .”, not "Ethically, a restaurant should . . . ". To me, a restaurant should be willing to serve anything on the menu to anyone–not always at the same price, of course, but if a person wants a simple grilled cheese sandwich and the only place it is listed is on the kids’ menu, they ought to be willing to provide that at some price. If I went to a restaurant and they were not willing to do that for someone, I would be a bit surprised; if it were a chain, I’d roll my eyes (internally) at corporate inflexibility; if it were somewhere independent, I’d think they were making a silly call. If that makes me an entitled bitch, I guess I fit the bill.
I agree, and would go further: restaurants should ideally be willing to accommodate simple off-menu requests as well. Bobby Dupea should have been able to get some damn toast.
The main thing I see that’s annoying is people insisting they should pay the children’s price for it. If I went to the local restaurant that serves children free quesadillas, I might ask for a quesadilla, but I’d expect to pay four bucks or so for it. Same thing if I ordered a (bleagh!) corn dog from another restaurant: even though it might be three bucks on the kid’s menu, I would expect them to charge me five or six, in line with what they’d charge for a low-cost adult menu item.