It’s Saturday night. The $12-an-hour babysitter has arrived and she might actually wash the dishes and not spend all evening on the Internet. The minivan has at least a half tank of gas. A dress has been picked out. A husband has been told to change his shirt with food stains on it.
Date night!
Time for the parents to dine in a restaurant. Drink a bottle of wine. Order a $23 fish entree. Share a chocolate dessert. Spend, oh, $175 for an evening that involves only sitting, eating and conversation as normal. But this time it will be — not that we don’t love them — without kids.
The AJC’s Momania blogger Theresa Walsh Giarrusso set this conversation in motion when she asked me and restaurant reviewer Meridith Ford Goldman about our favorite no-fail, always-reliable, babysitter-worthy restaurants. Theresa was concerned with finding places that offered good value for the money, and where the staff would make minivan-driving suburbanites feel welcome rather than not cool …