Restaurant Adventures: Dining Out Through the Ages (with Kids + Beyond!) EP 454

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Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

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Speaker 2: And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This episode is airing in mid April of twenty twenty six. Sarah and I are going to be talking about dining out. We are perhaps in our restaurant era as our kids have gotten older and it becomes more fun. But we're talking about in general meals restaurants, how it's been through family life, our favorites, memories, and so forth. We are doing this while recording in Vero Beach. We are on our podcasting retreat. So we've been eating out together at a couple restaurants. We ate at this hotel restaurant. Last night, we ate it Lemon Tree Diner. This morning. That was a Sarah suggestion. You've been there several times, right.

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Speaker 2: Sarah, I'm a regular at the Lemon Tree. Well, a regular every time you're hearing Vero, you're a regular.

00:01:23
Speaker 1: So we had a you know, coffee and bacon and kish and all those good things.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and we might have gotten the idea for this episode while while sitting in a restaurant. While sitting in a restaurant the other night, but Laura commented that she's like, you know, all of a sudden, I like, it's fun to go to restaurants as a family. So we thought, hey, that's actually an interesting milestone to explore a little bit further. And then one not just chat about restaurants.

00:01:48
Speaker 1: Just chat about restaurants in general, a topic we enjoy. So Sarah like, we'll start with blasts from the past. Do you have memories of childhood favorite restaurants? Well, first, did you guys go out to eat?

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Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good question. Yes we did. I wouldn't say frequently, maybe, I mean it was a regular thing, maybe twice a month. If I had to guess, a mix of mostly pretty casual places. I feel like the place we went the most was a little Italian place called Alfonso's that was like super old school Italian, Like there was a cute little nona grandmother who would like walk around the restaurant and pick up any babies and like carry them around so the.

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Speaker 1: Parents can And there was really high service menu.

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Speaker 2: It was like a paper map of Italy that you could like draw all over, like really, you know. So we went there a lot, and I also have memories of we went to New Hampshire fairly frequently. And actually I'm not sure if Polly's Pancake Parlor is in New Hampshire or Vermont off the top of my head, but it is up there, and we went there pretty much every time we were in the area, and I loved it. And then listeners might remember that our family went to New Hampshire last summer and we went to Polly's and let me tell you, it was still amazing.

00:02:56
Speaker 1: It was so good.

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Speaker 2: Oh totally held up to mind expectations multiple generations experiencing the fun of Polly's Pancake Parlor. Yeah.

00:03:05
Speaker 1: I don't think we went out to eat all that often, like certainly not too nice restaurants in my childhood. I do have memories of being a frequent McDonald's customer. And this was especially when we're my school age years, and I know my dad was responsible for us in the afternoons because my mom was working as a tutor. So I think we went to McDonald's a few times and I remember getting like almost all of the McDonald's monopoly pieces, right, like, we had all of them except like park Place or whatever. It was the good one that would make you win. And then at some point we started going to the mall food court, the Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been well, I don't even know if that place is still open, but.

00:03:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, well there was the Japanese place that I decided to get a little fancy and I would get the kariaki chicken at the mall food court and that would be my dinner there. So that's my fine dining from childhoods.

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Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. No food memories are strong, And as you're listening to this, you can think through you know, do you miss the restaurants of your past, and what kinds of food memories are you creating for your kids. That's true, that's true.

00:04:12
Speaker 1: It says something that they might remember places they're going to go with their kids and being like, oh, remember when we used to do that. But speaking of memories, do you have any particular memorable meals? I know you've tried to do like a top five from time to time.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say this is one of my favorite. Like, if we're on a long card trip and I'm trying to keep my husband awake and we're like thinking about like fun memories, I'm like, can you come up with your top five concerts? And then like top five restaurants? Okay, And I feel like we're always shifting around what's on them. But if I had to give you top five right now, I'll just indulge. Number one is probably French Laundry, which is very, very fancy. It was very hard to get into and it was very expensive, but it was so fun. That's in Napa Valley and it's multiple courses and very elaborate that. We had a very memorable dinner in Lahina at a place that's now unfortunately I think was lost in the fires. Maybe it closed before then, but it was great. It's called David Paul's was the name of the restaurant. Two Chapel Hill Restaurants are quite memorable. I think Lantern is still open, really cool Asian fusion cuisine. And then there was a French place called Bunsuoret that had handwritten menus and calligraphy. Oh my gosh, I love that place, so up your alley. And then finally, the only like a local standout I think that I would put on my list would be there's a restaurant called Biblos in Miami Beach that we love and we actually held Josh's fiftieth birthday party there.

00:05:36
Speaker 1: That sounds fun. That's a good place. Yeah. So Aquavite in New York City has a lot of memories associated with you know, for me, like we would. Michael and I went there on an early date and it was very fancy. I think it was the first kind of restaurant like that had really been to or you know, multi course and wine pairings and things like that. We got had the fun of it. We've eaten at French Laundry twice. Once was with Michael's siblings and spouses to celebrate his brother's fortieth birthday. That we all did a trip out to Wine Country, which was a lot of fun. And then he and I went a couple of years later to celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary, which yes, my memory is that it is very difficult to get reservations. So that's one way to make your restaurants stand out is make it so difficult to get in that people think, well, it must be amazing if I'm here.

00:06:27
Speaker 2: Yes, that is a very memorable place. So if you are looking for like a very memorable, very treat type of a meal, you might want to look at that, but you're going to have to do some work, do some work.

00:06:38
Speaker 1: To get the Yeah. Although one memory that sort of started something with me and my sixteen year old son as we ate at the cousin's main lobster food truck at like a food fair, festival whatever once and we're like at a festival with food trucks. Normally I don't like waiting in lines, but if I see that there is one truck that has a much much longer line and then everyone else, I assume there's a reason for it. So we decided to wait in the line and got very good lobster roles. They were amazing, and so he and I have eaten a cousin being lobster where we can find them like a truck would appear in our area once every couple weeks, I guess, And so we try to track it down and find it.

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Speaker 2: Do you get like an alert on your phone?

00:07:18
Speaker 1: You can? You can, Yeah it's here, Yeah, it's in the parking lot of this place. Go find it. Well, I love.

00:07:24
Speaker 2: That's like totally a food tradition that you're building. Yeah.

00:07:27
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So there's obviously restaurants you go when you're as a couple or with friends or something as adults. Then there is the era when you have young children, so babies and restaurants. Sarah, have you brought babies to restaurants?

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Speaker 2: I have? And I didn't include this in the script, but I think I don't know if you have a worst restaurant moment with kids, but I can share mine.

00:07:48
Speaker 1: Oh yes, we could do that.

00:07:49
Speaker 2: I can share mine. So well, first of all, I'll say we were that couple that was like, Okay, we're just gonna, you know, bring out. We're not going to change our life, so we're going to bring our baby out to dinner. And honestly it worked really really well for about a year. Annabell like really liked eating whatever, and she would like happily sit there and we could like have our you know, it was wonderful. So I would encourage people with like when they're in their pre walking era, to go nuts taking their kids to all types of restaurants, because that's actually.

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Speaker 1: A time one baby, when you have one baby, well maybe twins that weren't twins, okay, or if you happen to have a twelve year old and a baby, yeah, and you could put anything in between there.

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Speaker 2: Anything in between gets a lot harder, but yeah, so we did take advantage of that baby phase. And I also have there's like a memorable I think it was an anniversary dinner or something, but we went to this lovely restaurant in Portland, organ with our good friends with Genevieve's sleeping in a car seat, and actually she never ended up waking up that whole dinner. So in our friend's mind it was like, wow, that was amazing. But in my mind, I spent the whole time staring at her like now she's gonna wake up?

00:08:50
Speaker 1: Have it now? How about now? How about now?

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Speaker 2: And like you know, am I gonna it's the wine I'm gonna drinking, gonna like poison her. I don't know, like it wasn't the best.

00:08:58
Speaker 1: But okay, what was the worst? I hear the worst? Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent.

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Speaker 2: The worst was a we were actually visiting Durham. We'd moved to Florida, but my sister I think was still in North Carolina and my parents, I think we're there too, and we like all went to meet and we went to this place called Goolhoff. I've been a whole bunch of times. It's lovely. It still exists in Durham. And it was like daytime hours, but it was like an early dinner and the kids were probably I don't know, four and two.

00:09:25
Speaker 1: Oh.

00:09:25
Speaker 2: It just we didn't have done baby ups two kids.

00:09:29
Speaker 1: It just failed it.

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Speaker 2: We had kids screaming under the table and my parents were like horrified, like why can't your kids you don't sit up whatever, And we ended up taking our homemal to go and I have pictures of us in our hotel room because Annabelle then rose to the occasion once we were back as a four year old and she's like Cameron, like fall asleep. She was like happily like sitting on the floor and we're like eating our takeout dinner. That had not supposed to be takeout, so that was probably Yeah, that was our epic fail.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean it's not so much of this as a fail. It's just a memorable like mismatch between I mean expectations and reality that when we were at Disney World and with all of us, all seven of us in early twenty twenty four, and we had a dinner at the Beauty and the Beast Castle and it's not a cheap experience to do the character dining at Disney, and my younger kids were in such like a bad place, like at the end of a day at Disney World, and I was kind of tired and in pain because I had my back incident five weeks earlier, but I was trying to like put on a good face for this Disney trip that had been planned months and months ahead of time. And we're sitting there and like people are not eating the food, and like Henry ordered like three different of the fancy like drinks or whatever and then spilled one or like didn't eat one and then that threw stuff on the floor, and he's like running around and I'm just like, oh, I can't believe I'm like doing this now.

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Speaker 2: What you envisioned.

00:10:53
Speaker 1: I mean it's not really envisioned when you had that reservation. I'm sure it's nothing new for anyone. And working at Disney, I mean they have young kids there all the time. But still I felt like, you know, why are we so terrible? Why can we not enjoy our beauty and the beast experience.

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Speaker 2: I think there's a reason, especially with the little kids, that it's the character breakfasts that are the hit.

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Speaker 1: Yes, that's true breakfast we have more discipline and focused are our best selves at this? All right? Well, with that, we're going to take an ad break and be back with more. Well we are back talking at restaurant dining, dining out. Yeah, you mentioned the Portland meal where Genevieve just slept. We brought Jasper to a really, really nice Japanese restaurant in New York City when he was about four months old, and I had gotten a babysitter, but she kind of canceled last minute, or I think she didn't even show up. That was one of the you know, it's new to hiring babysitters at that time. But so we're like, well, what do we do? We have this reservation room, so we were like, well, okay, you know, I called the restaurant again. They're like, well, of course, you know, we can't. We're not. We don't forbid children in the restaurant. I mean, so we brought him and he slept the whole time, and it worked really well, and he woke up right at the end and got the check and quickly high tailed it out of there. But yeah, it works until they're mobile. Yeah, and then it's kind of torture for the next several years.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a lot of fun.

00:12:24
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe your children, maybe there are children of people listening to this who are more angelic than ours.

00:12:29
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I mean we did it. I'm not saying that we like never went out to eat. Yeah, absolutely went out to eat one hack. I was thinking about, like what made it manageable, And we did develop a practice of asking for the check as soon as our food arrived, and also making sure the food is all going to come at once, Like we would specifically say, like even if we ordered an appetizer, like can you just bring everything out?

00:12:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, put all the orders in at once.

00:12:53
Speaker 2: They kick stuff out exactly, and then can we the check? And then that way even if we're only eating for like seven but it's enough to like eat enough, we can just be like, okay, we're making anox it because they're done.

00:13:05
Speaker 1: But we wouldn't yet, we wouldn't do it as a recreational kind of thing. It's more that you're on a trip and your only option really is to eat at a restaurant because you don't have kitchen facilities or whatever, which I will say there have been several trips where we have rented places that have kitchens precisely for that reason, because then we're not right.

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Speaker 2: It's poper not to have to deal with it. Or takeout is like a really nice even you know, a lot of back in the toddler days, it was like, oh, we're gonna do take out with friends. So it's almost like you're on a double date outs to eat, but like you can be much more flexible around what the kids are kid running around doing versus yeah, because it's still in a restaurant.

00:13:41
Speaker 1: But I've noticed a real change in the last year or so. And you know, Henry, my youngest is now six, and there comes an age when it be is not so much torture anymore that it is starts to be relaxing. Now he is an active little six year old boy. However, we have decided that it is okay for him to play tablet games at the restaurant. And partly that is because I have older children that I want to have a relaxed dining experience with, and so by keeping him entertained, I don't have to not go out with my older kids and have to race out like be doing the thing where you get the check early. We can actually enjoy like a leisurely restaurant dinner because he is playing the games. And now it would be wonderful if he was the kind of kid who could be entertained by krans for an hour, but he is not.

00:14:34
Speaker 2: He might be close to being books though, books though that's true. Books could be specially like a fresh like dirowimby kid.

00:14:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's true. He's getting there. He's slowly getting there. And but yeah, the older ones are more like engage in conversation and that's enjoyable and you know, so as long as he's not running off and throwing things.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we actually, like we never allowed our kids to have screens out to dinner, and I think we just sort of was like we didn't want to open that Pandora's box and then have that be discussion every time, like Ken, you can't you whatever. It was just like we're not doing that. But again, we didn't have quite the age spread you have, so I felt like it was more like we just didn't.

00:15:09
Speaker 1: Well, I think it would be harder for you to defend a policy that like Genevieve could have it, but like Annabel can't, whereas I feel perfectly fine telling my older children get off your phones. We're talking and the younger ones are on. No, it totally makes sense. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So now it's becoming, you know, more of a regular thing, which you know now that we're in the restaurant era of family activities. So some local favorites, Sarah, what do you have your local favorites? Where do you like to go?

00:15:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wish we had like a walking distance favorite.

00:15:39
Speaker 1: But we'll let me know we don't have that either.

00:15:42
Speaker 2: Well or even like in my town, because all of these that I'm listing, maybe with the exception of the sports bar, are like Fort Lauderdale. You're in this city twenty minutes at least, correct, So we love this place. Yacht it's like outside of Fort Lauderdale and it's very like nautical themed. We actually had our best plans live dinner there last year. It's super fun. We like this Italian place called Aquallina in Weston that's like a good date place but also like a nicer family dinner. My kids love going out for sushi or any kind of Asian fusion or raj ramen, So we have a few places. Actually that's probably our most local restaurant our sushi places, like yeah, right there, so that's really nice. And then finally there's a chain of sports bars that it's like sort of steak in seafoody called Flanagans in Florida. And like some people listening to us are gonna laugh because I feel like it has a very cheesy reputation, but.

00:16:33
Speaker 1: Just a cheesy restaurant can be great. Like they give you a beer, they give you a burger, you are a person.

00:16:38
Speaker 2: Josh likes it and we recently discovered. Okay, it's near our house. And if you have a sports geme you want to watch, they have like a bar that has like rose of individual screens so you can put whatever yih sport you are trying to watch on and yeah, we've had fun there, so I guess I'm gonna include that on our current list. And by the way I track our restaurants, I think it's fun to like collect what we've gone to and what we've gone to multiple times. So one of my planner spreads this year has been a list of all the restaurants I put in our restaurant last night.

00:17:06
Speaker 1: Oh, excellent, excellent. Well, so, speaking of restaurants we have been together, one of my favorites is Coyote Crossing, which is a Mexican restaurant in Chihakan, which is about fifteen minutes from us. Sarah has gone there with me twice. Now, right, great, yeah, super fun, it's super fun. Lascalus is a rising star in our universe. They are an Italian place that's near Villanova University, so it's also about fifteen minutes from us, and we went there the other night. Basically, everyone could get something that we're happy with, and when there's a lot of people, having everyone be happy is good.

00:17:41
Speaker 2: It's a win.

00:17:41
Speaker 1: It's a win. It's a win, and it's like relatively casual, so I feel okay coming in with all my children and like wearing sweatpants and whatever. The melting pot has become a family favorite all of a sudden.

00:17:54
Speaker 2: Which a student. Listeners will remember that we have had a like yearly melting pot extravaganza. And I think until recently you had not tried it, had not tried it, but now you've might have gone more.

00:18:02
Speaker 1: Than we have. Yeah, well, my kids also discovered that fondue is really good and also alert listeners. We feel like Laura, I thought you couldn't eat dairy products, and you would be correct. So when we do, I try not to go that out that my kids want to go a lot, but we when we've gone, I just I eat it and I understand that things may not be pleasant afterwards. The end, the end. Let's just leave it at that. Olive Garden is a surprise hit, I mean, one of our favorite family dinners ever, all seven of us. Last Thanksgiving break, so when joshper was home from college, we went to Dutch Wonderland for an evening to go see the lights and do a few rides. And it was bitterly cold for unknown reasons, like the temperature said it was thirty two, but there was something with the humidity that it was just it was worse. It was worse. It was insane. It was awful. As we're wandering around like freezing, and then we're coming out of this and it's like, well the lights are pretty, but we're all in contra. And then somebody's like, we could go out to eat, we could go to Olive Garden, or like, we could go to Olive Garden. And sure enough, there's an olive garden that was like five minutes from the park and they had no wait and even for seven of us. So we went and like everybody was so happy, like with the salad is good, the breadsticks are good.

00:19:24
Speaker 2: Sometimes you just nail it. You have a great night, and now you're gonna have to go back to the old and garden.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, but one other my kids are like as Founding Farmers and King of Prussia. It's also got a brunch option. We're not quite in our brunch era yet, but that's that go on date nights. We've gone to Amada, which you've also been to, Sarah. Yes, that was kind of a date night of you and me and Kathleen. Yes, so a different sort of date night. We've been to Sta Taverna, which is like a local Greek place. It's all, you know, standard Greek but good Marimoto downtown Japanese. And then Tallula's Garden, which is another place we've gone with you guys.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, do you like repeating a lot restaurants or do you like, like always trying something different? I don't.

00:20:04
Speaker 1: I mean I like to go to favorites that I know, and I feel like I've listed enough here that it's never like, oh, we've been to this one so often, because there's enough of a difference between like Coyote Crossing and a Mada and a Stia ta Verona, a Morimoto or Tulula. Is like, I'm not going out that often. Like if I went to one of those every three weeks, that would take me through five months basically of not repeating.

00:20:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like I tend to prefer repeating and Josh likes to always like try try something random place.

00:20:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Well Philadelphia just got Michelin Guide reviewed, So there's a couple of restaurants now with Michelin Stars in Philly. That's a new thing. So I think we probably will try those pretty soon.

00:20:43
Speaker 2: Cool. That's motivation.

00:20:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's motivation. Well, let's take one more quick ad break and then we'll be back with more talking about dining out.

00:21:03
Speaker 2: Well, we are back, and we've been talking all things restaurants, and obviously we were a little South Florida and Philadelphia centric. But I think our point is to like think through your restaurant portfolio. What are you missing, what do you need, what do you like, what works with the kids, what works without the kids, and eventually you'll find your happy cadence. So what about traveling, because eating at restaurants while traveling is a little bit different, and it also might be something that we did do more when our kids were a little just out of necessity.

00:21:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'm with you, Sarah that it's really helpful to have a reservation, especially with a larger group of people. You can hope that they randomly have a table for seven, and sometimes they do. Sometimes you get lucky, but the odds are against you.

00:21:49
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I'm so team reservation. And I even go in with the idea that, like, worst case, we don't want to use this reservation. I mean, yes, every so often you have to put a deposit in, but generally you don't if it's a busy enough place and you have to cancel, like they're fine, you're gonna They're gonna fill that table. We definitely go to most of our reservations, but I would so much rather have one than not have one. I will say I have learned some tricks, so like every once in a while, you just something goes wrong, or you can go to the open table app and search in a given area if they have any open tables for a family of table yeah, or rezi app as well. So like there are some ways around it, yes, talk, but I generally like planning ahead, and honestly, some of that anticipation, like can be part of us, like being excited about our vacation is going to our favorite places. And I don't mean that we're always going to fancy places. A lot of really casual like pizza joints like take reservations these days.

00:22:41
Speaker 1: So and the modern technology of stuff like open table is so wonderful because it removes a lot of that friction of doing this. I mean, you don't have to call six restaurants to see do you have a table for seven? You just put in seven and you can see, like here are four restaurants that do have space in the dinner hour and if you like them, great, If you don't, I guess you're figuring something else out, but it at least, you know, makes it a possibility.

00:23:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I would say on vacation, we're big about like mixing up like bigger, nicer meals with like more casual things because we just get I call it restauranted out. I'm like, oh, I'm restauranted out. I'm sick of like I don't know that like whole vibe. So let's find again, like a cafe that has ramen, or like a takeout pizza or just like something that's a little bit more.

00:23:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, especially if you are in a place that does have a fridge, like if you're in a hotel that has a fridge, or if you're in like an airbnb or something, getting your leftovers from some night and then eating them totally. Yeah. I mean often by the end of a trip we'll wind up with more food leftovers than we really need it, and we just try to, like for lunches and whatever, make sure that we're eating those things to keep the we've gone to like grocery stores too. I mean we do almost always rent, like when we're traveling is very rare that we were in hotels again because there are so many of us, Like, when we do have to be into hotels, it's often like three rooms and that is kind of ridiculous. Ate, So we're going to be in like a condo or something like that and that does have a kitchen, and then we'll go to a grocery store and get at least breakfast and lunch type stuff.

00:24:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love being able to do that. What about like, is there certain places that you guys gravitate towards since you have some selective eaters.

00:24:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think I talk a little bit about this in our episode when I talk about the Galapagos trip, but even in overseas and things like that, if it's a restaurant that has fries on the menu anywhere, then you can order it for your selective eater. So it would be like any place that had a steak free kind of thing. But obviously we gravitate toward things like pubs because a pub will have burgers and often chicken fingers, and they definitely have fries so people can eat that. We wind up at a lot of Italian places as well, because again, if they have any sort of pasta. They can just give you the pasta like with butter and parmesan or even plain whatever your kid is willing to eat. And usually the rest of us who like food can find something at an Italian restaurant that we were willing to eat.

00:25:05
Speaker 2: And then do you have any like specific like ordering practices.

00:25:08
Speaker 1: So this is, you know, something Sarah and I started talking about that you wind up in certain habits with how you eat at a restaurant that are imprinted early, and then you just so when Michael and I first started eating out together, we would always order an appetizer and a maine, but we almost never order assert. So it's pretty standard for us to look at the appetizers and get something off the appetizers and order a main. But I'm almost never We're always like, oh, we don't need to see the dessert menu or whatever. I'm sure they have great desserts, but I don't know, I just it's not in my habit, like in my mind that I really order much desserts except for the melting pot, where that's you know, half the fun.

00:25:44
Speaker 2: We totally order desserts when we go out. I would say we tend to do more sharing or like lighter ordering of the other stuff, particularly because I know I'm going to like want the teremi su or whatever it is. We're also really big into like if there's an appetizer side of the menu or like a sort of small places or sharing plates and then like a main plate's like we're all about like the order a whole bunch of small plates. And I had a memorable dinner with friends where we literally order the entire column. We're like, we'll have all of those, and they're like really, and we're like, yeah, that's what we want, all of those things. And it was like ten or twelve little plates and there were four of us, and it.

00:26:14
Speaker 1: Was, oh, that's not amazing. That's not well, happetizer's often better than what the mains are, I know, I know, they're just more interesting interesting. Maybe they're different flavors, higher fat and sugar. Who knows, that could be it too, But yeah, Sarah and I last night at our restaurant mostly ordered the appetizer kind of things.

00:26:31
Speaker 2: And split those. Yeah, that is great. And we do have a family dessert tradition. Was your family dessert tradition, which is generally we just order one and get five spoons. But like, we don't just let that unfold organically because certain people might eat a lot of it and then not leave a lot for others. So we go around the table in reverse age order, starting with Genevieve, and then we just like each take a bite. And then there's always like the invariable joke about like one kid will like put the whole plate on their spoon, like ha ha ha, But no, it actually usually restare deserts are enormous, so it's usually like everyone's happy and it's kind of actually fun.

00:27:04
Speaker 1: And no one's germophobic enough that they aren't willing to eat in the family, Well, I don't know if we have different opinions than some of our family members.

00:27:12
Speaker 2: Very interesting, No, I think whenever there's like a lot of sugar involved, everyone will put those concerns, with.

00:27:17
Speaker 1: Those concerns inside the sugar kills everything. Obviously this may explain how you guys are getting the same cold.

00:27:23
Speaker 2: No, I'm not getting the cold I'm saying I mean, you'd think we would all get it, and then it's like surprise, two out of five, two out.

00:27:30
Speaker 1: Of five, maybe they close to each other. So are you guys in your brunch era yet.

00:27:36
Speaker 2: No, I mean we will go on occasion. I'd say we go to brunch once every month, maybe as a family. If we don't have a lot going on, a kid will like ask about it. We have one. Oh my gosh, soft Floridians.

00:27:46
Speaker 1: I should keep it a secrets because you're gonna be standing in line with them.

00:27:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, but maple and cream is awesome. It's so good.

00:27:54
Speaker 1: What time is brunch for you eat? It's like lunch lunch.

00:27:58
Speaker 2: It's like eleven or twelve or something. South Filardians do not sleep on maple and cream, which is it's amazing. It's pretty close to me in Cooper City and it is just really awesome brunch food.

00:28:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, do you have to make reservations area waiting in line for I feel like waiting in line for brunch is like a thing people sometimes do.

00:28:18
Speaker 2: I don't think they take reservations, but they have a really nice app where like when you get there, you're able to see how much time it's going to take, and in our experience, it's always less than it says. Yeah Disney World, Disney World ride. So it's not bad, it's not bad.

00:28:32
Speaker 1: Okay, Well we've gone to White Dog Cafe. Gain We're not really in our brunch area yet. And now partly that's like kid activities, right often are going to be interfering with sort of a mid day on a weekend to kind of having a leisurely lunch. At that point, I do like the idea of eating breakfast food for lunch, so you know, I guess anyhow you can make that happen, it's a good thing. But yeah, we go to White Dog Cafe sometimes, and that Founding Farmers actually has a brunch as well. We've done that once before. I think we might wind up doing it again.

00:29:02
Speaker 2: Awesome, And then I think neither of us are big into going out to lunch very often. Yeah, it's just, you know, it takes a lot of time, like during the day, and I'm not near rest. It's not like my office is right next to a bunch of cute little restaurants that I might want to eat in. I'm I would have to get in my car and go somewhere, and that would take a lot of time during the day.

00:29:21
Speaker 1: I tried to do DoorDash for a while, but I was kind of I don't know. I always have leftovers in the house, So that's quicker as well.

00:29:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I feel like our out to lunch is only out of necessity if we're like stuck somewhere and then we find a Panera or some Yeah, yeah, Panera's good.

00:29:35
Speaker 1: I like Panera easy. All right, So this has been our restaurant discussion. Our question for the week is about a topic that is near and dear to many, a working mothers hard sleep. Okay, right, how do you wind down? What strategies do you have if you can't stay asleep? So we learn new things about each other all the time, and I learned the Sarah sleeps like a baby.

00:29:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can always stay sleep and I can always fall asleep. But I will say I do have like a wine down, which is that I usually read and then I usually fall asleep before I would like to fall asleep.

00:30:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, after and you don't wake up in the middle of the night like ever, or if I do, I just go back to see Okay.

00:30:15
Speaker 2: Even after the aforementioned in a prior episode, three AM Target Roller Rabbit Purchaser, you're able to go back to sleep.

00:30:21
Speaker 1: And as we've learned, you don't drink a lot of water. You're not you don't have to wait in the middle of the night, you know. Okay, well that's an approach as well. So yeah, I'm sort of obviously just have the usual wash my face, brush my teeth. Sometimes I'll read in bed magazine or a book. I take melatonin at night, which I find is just helpful for having that wine down kind of feeling it.

00:30:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, interesting and you don't find it wears off. No, okay, good, well it might.

00:30:53
Speaker 1: I mean I sometimes do wake up in the middle of the night, you know. I would say it's probably maybe at least four nights a week I'm up in the middle of the night because I need to go to the bathroom. And then sometimes I can usually tell, like if I'm really sleepy coming back from that, I know I'm going to fall right straight back asleep. But sometimes I'm much more awake if I've been having more interesting dream or disturbing dream or like for whatever reason it's I'm feeling more awake, I might take another half a miltonin to get myself sort of in that mindset again of Okay, now I'm calming down sleep. So that's yeah, that's my strategy for that. But this is something that also if you're ladies of a certain age, many of us listening to this as we hit our mid forties or you know, maybe earlier. I know Sarah can speak more to this that there's hormonal changes that sometimes do interfere with people sleep, but there's also the things you can do about that, so you probably don't have to suffer if you seek medical help for that.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: Yes, and those things might be hormone replacement related other medications, things like magnesium supplements, et cetera. I know magnesium is really big in the sleep world world, and I guess I will give an a side that I do struggle to sleep when I am on call and I get called and woken up that certain times that is because there's just I'm worried about whatever it is that the phone call was. And whenever you're stressed about something, it is hard to sleep.

00:32:14
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean I find it hard to sleep on planes, for instance, Like no matter the circumstances, I just it's so hard to sleep because I'm like just a little bit antsy about it and it's hard to relax. And that's the case. So yeah, But the good things is I think one night of bad sleep doesn't hurt you that much, totally agree.

00:32:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that takes the pressure because I think sometimes what impedes people sleep even more is they start getting anxious about not getting sleep. But if you tell yourself, you know what, tonight's might be bad, and I'll be functional tomorrow, and as long as I don't do this every night, I'll be okay, then you'll probably get yourself back. Yeah.

00:32:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, And a good night can then cover up for a host of sins and you'll feel like a million bucks the next day. All right, So Love of the Week, I'm going to go with a restaurant themed one of restaurant guacamole, Like if you're at a really good Mexican place, like, feel like I make a good guacamoli, but they're going to do it better. Yeah.

00:33:03
Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to give a shout out to a really good restaurant burger and for vegan and vegetarian friends, Lots of restaurants have great different types of burgers as well. Love a good turkey burger too, But yeah, restaurant burgers, like sometimes nothing else nails it, just like that.

00:33:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, they figure out the salting and the way the rest of us just don't, but we've been talking about restaurant meals in general. We'd love to hear about your favorite places, especially when we travel. We'd love to try new places, and we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:33:36
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.

00:33:48
Speaker 1: This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.