The Gundel Restaurant and Garden has provided the inspiration here, but children’s menus are a key issue in almost every restaurant – from frozen, breaded dinosaur-shaped nuggets to a focus on quality.

The Gundel Restaurant and Garden has provided the inspiration here, but children’s menus are a key issue in almost every restaurant – from frozen, breaded dinosaur-shaped nuggets to a focus on quality.

Until recently, most children’s menus were limited to the predictable selection of burgers and chips, pizza or frozen chicken nuggets. However, as public awareness of the importance of healthy eating grows, and childhood obesity is on the rise in many parts of the world, many parents would like to be able to choose from a wider variety of options. Furthermore, educational institutions – as well as restaurants – play an influential role in shaping children’s taste preferences. We spoke to András Wolf about the children’s menu at the recently refurbished Gundel Restaurant.

These days, families are more keen than ever to take their children to restaurants, as many parents believe that eating out together is an opportunity to spend quality family time together. However, dining out with children can be expensive and anything but relaxing, unless the restaurant is genuinely child-friendly and well-prepared to cater for them. Fortunately, though, there are more and more child-friendly venues here in Hungary too. For such restaurants, children’s menus can be useful at any time, but they play a particularly important role during Sunday family lunches, as one of the key secrets of any successful family-friendly restaurant is the right children’s menu. These menus really work when they are able to appeal to different age groups, whilst also meeting parents’ expectations in terms of quality.

„It’s important to make the menu interesting for children; particular attention must be paid here to the format and composition of the menu. At Gundel, we believe it’s important for children to enjoy the restaurant experience as well, and not just for the food. That’s why the children’s menu includes a story accessible via a QR code, which is well worth downloading to make the experience complete. This is aimed primarily at the 4–8 age group; it really captures their attention,” explains András Wolf.

In the restaurant, the youngest guests can colour in the Gundel Palace using a downloadable Gundel Kids app, which they can open via a QR code in the Gundel App, allowing them to read or listen to Uncle Gundel’s story. The main character is Fáncsi the Curious, the elephant, who helps children find the surprises hidden in the Gundel Garden.

„It is important that children are given food that they genuinely enjoy eating. With children, this is also linked to the characteristics of each age group; once they reach a certain age, they become much more curious and open-minded, and the time also comes when they can choose for themselves from the menu,” emphasises András Wolf.

However, when we’re talking about younger children, we need to bear in mind that every child has their own favourite dishes, and we need to adapt the portion sizes to suit them.

„When it comes to the children’s menu, the most important thing is not that the dishes should be as extravagant or unusual as possible, but that they should be prepared to the same high standard, using the same quality ingredients, as the dishes on the full menu. Children tend to like best what they are used to, and what they may have already encountered at home,” notes András Wolf.

Gundel’s children’s menu also features familiar comfort foods: meat soup with pasta, breaded cutlets, pasta with tomato sauce and pancakes – but none of them are frozen convenience products. The friendly elephant and other savannah animals also greet us from the sides of the soft drink glasses, in which children can enjoy a range of healthy drinks, from sugar-free lemonade, and freshly squeezed juices right through to smoothies.

„In the restaurant, we always prepare the children’s meals in advance; in our experience as parents, if a child receives their food first, they focus on that, so the parent can then eat more calmly and enjoy the restaurant experience,” – says the chef with a laugh.

It is commendable that more and more establishments are taking care to ensure that, when a family with children visits a restaurant, the youngest guests are treated to the same high-quality dining experience as the rest of the family; indeed, the dining experiences we gain are important; this is truly an educational process, and the sooner someone learns to distinguish between dining options and experiences of varying standards, the more refined their taste will become as an adult.