I’m Not Superwoman! :: Our Dining Disaster

I believe some people think we have it SO easy when we take our out kids for a meal. The door is always opened for us, the food is ordered correctly, it arrives on our table within time, the kids are a joy to take out and they eat all their meals. Yeah l wish!

We decided to visit the South Melbourne Market on the weekend to grab some home-made dumplings and flowers. We hadn’t eaten breakfast, well I tell a lie, hubby and I hadn’t had breakfast. The kids had already eaten at god knows what hour of the morning and were most probably looking for lunch, so we thought we’d visit a local café before we started our shopping to have a cheeky bite to eat.

We popped into the Bunyip Café across the road from the market, it was busy and there weren’t any tables, but we had only discovered that after l had wrestled the pram through the door and we were all standing on top of each other inside this very cosy café. Everyone just looked at us and the staff passed us several times without even a nod, a wink, a bump or a smile.

I backed the pram out and waited on the foot path while hubby sourced a table. After a few minutes we had a table, which still had the previous diner’s dirty plates and cups sitting there. I parked the pram in the café’s parking bay (very family friendly – so one gold star there!) popped Mr 1 on my lap and we waited. And waited. Finally after a few minutes of sitting there stopping the kids from playing with the dirty crockery the waitress cleared the table. I went to ask for a highchair and she was already gone, so went and fetched my own. Then we waited (and waited!) for the menus, which never came. I went and grabbed some and finally our order was eventually taken. At this stage we just wanted to get out of there as we felt very uncomfortable and could foresee this wasn’t going to be a smooth dining experience. Mr 1 was restless so l went back into the pram to grab his bottle, and as l stood up the waitress walking past hit me in the head with 2 dinner plates. What the? My hubby thought it was highly amusing, I on the other hand was very embarrassed and l wanted the earth to swallow me up. To cut a long boring story short, our order was mixed up, the kids meals came last, my tea was cold and we just wanted to get out of there as soon as we could because our dining vibe was gone.

So the reason l share this story is because everyone thinks we are on easy street when it comes to dining out. We do get bad service, we do eat shit food, and our kids do misbehave sometimes but it doesn’t stop us from going out. We just have a laugh, put it down to experience and get back on the horse and plan the next adventure. Our family motto is ‘better luck next time!”

**On the flip side Bunyip Café have some family friendly features like a box of toys – pram parking space – one kids breakfast option and mini milk shakes.**