Can you take food in to a restaurant?

Does an angry kid justify being able to bring your own food in to a restaurant? Photo / iStock

"You can't take food to a restaurant. What did they expect?" was my second thought upon reading about the kerfuffle at a West Auckland Nando's. (My first reaction was to wonder whether an establishment that requires patrons to queue to place their order deserves to be called a restaurant but that's not important right now.)

The short story: a mother, father and five-year-old son turned up at Nando's Henderson for dinner. But what they also did is bring along a recently purchased "snack-size packet of sushi". Now this strikes me as a little weird. You're on your way to get "flame-grilled peri-peri chicken" and you stop for a snack?

Perhaps they had travelled a long way to get there? That theory isn't so believable in light of a Google search that revealed close to 20 Nando's outlets in Auckland. The child was "irritable and hungry" which is ostensibly why the sushi was purchased. Yet I reckon (barring health issues, behavioural issues or special circumstances of which we are unaware) you could easily tell a five-year-old to: "Be quiet. We're nearly there. You'll have your dinner soon." As a mother, I have no sympathy with my child's hunger pangs during the countdown to dinner: "I told you to have some fruit an hour ago", "You're going to have to wait for tea", "You're supposed to be hungry before dinner" and so on.

The upshot of the story is that restaurant staff expressed their displeasure at takeaway food being brought into their establishment. The couple subsequently cancelled their order, walked out and vowed not to return - which is precisely how I'd be feeling. I hate being told off, too. Yet the restaurant can't be faulted for its stance. Staff had already had to shoo away someone eating McDonald's that same day. Where was it going to end?

But in the middle of my simplistic "You can't take food to a restaurant" stance I suddenly had a flashback to when my daughter was one-year-old. Many Friday evenings we would go out to dinner with her from 5pm until 6pm. (At that stage, from memory, she had her dinner at 5pm and we had to be back home for her bottle by around 6pm. People who scoff at the military precision of the timetable might like to note she started sleeping through the night at the age of seven weeks. I'm sure some luck was involved in that but I'm equally certain of the benefits of routine for babies.)

We would usually go to Ruan Thai, Mission Bay. There was always a highchair, the staff welcomed babies and at that hour there were few other patrons. My sole purpose in going there for a fast dinner was so that our daughter would become accustomed from an early age to the rituals of dining out. Over the years, I'd seen plenty of children in restaurants yelling, running, crying and generally behaving inappropriately. I attributed that to poor training and/or inexperience. I was determined not to make that mistake.

Of course, at that age she was still eating baby-style food. I almost cringe now to remember we packed her a homemade dinner to eat at the restaurant. It was things like tiny honey sandwiches, raisins, wedges of cheese, probably some fruit. With this recollection I felt a bit of a hypocrite for frowning on the parents at the centre of sushi-gate.

But then I realised that, like anything, it's all about context. So when is it appropriate to take food into a restaurant?

There are three main factors to consider when contemplating this dilemma:

1. The age of the child involved: I think it's fine for a baby, might be acceptable for a toddler but five-years-old is pushing it.
2. The provenance of the food concerned: discreet homemade snacks might be okay but food from a rival establishment is not.
3. Most importantly, you need to take into account the wishes of the proprietors of the restaurant concerned. If they say it's not okay then it's not okay.