Blue Kangaroo, London SW6 (020 7371 7622)
Meal, for family of five plus playzone entry, £120
Parents of young children in restaurants can be pathetically grateful. Give them a pot of crayons and a paper tablecloth and they'll think you care. Blue Kangaroo, on the furthest reaches of the King's Road in London's Chelsea, tries to do much more than this. On the ground floor there is a buggy park, where the 4x4 strollers with bull bars favoured by the yummy mummies of these parts gleam in the early spring sunshine. There were Brio sets to play with. There were those crayons on the tables, and a long children's menu with more than just chicken nuggets and pasta to recommend it, plus a menu for adults and a modest wine list.
Downstairs in the basement, though, is the real draw: a large multi-level soft play area, overlooked by a coffee bar, and a smaller play area for the tiny ones. There are newspapers for the grown-ups, a selection of children's books, and they run regular events - puppet shows, storytellers - which suggests a genuine commitment to their market. The three small boys we took were impressed and, having understood the purpose of the trip, expressed their approval with a number of thumbs-ups that was so dizzying it suggested a genetic experiment gone wrong. At which point I wanted to drop my head into my hands and emit a low keening noise of distress. The fact is you can't trust children's opinions on these sorts of things. As long as there is pasta, ice cream and a surfeit of vinyl-covered foam involved, they'll be happy. Likewise, assuming the place is OK because it is full of parents and kids is a mistake. All you have to do is promise not to poke them with sticks and parents will come, whatever the failings, because they will assume it's all they deserve.
This is what you really need to know: Blue Kangaroo would be great, if it wasn't for the food. And the service. And the prices. Knowing it was popular, we booked for noon to avoid the rush. It took 30 minutes for any of our order to arrive, and even then it was just two milkshakes which tasted like nothing more than a glass of milk with a spoonful of fruit syrup which somebody had blown into through a straw. Yours for £2.50 a pop. Not only that, they brought only two of them, leaving the third small person to sit, lip a-quiver watching the others. We had to ask twice. I expect this sort of thing from a place that has little or no experience of children, but certainly not from one that puts them central to their business plan.
It was the same when, after a full 40 minutes, the food finally turned up. They brought the adults' dishes first. Note to 'child-friendly restaurants': never feed adults first. We will not relax, we will not eat, until the poor underfed scraps around us have theirs. There is a basic point here. All parents want from restaurants where kids are concerned is that they remove any anxiety associated with being there. If they can't do this they are close to useless.
Though it also helps if they can cook. On the upside, the spaghetti Bolognese ordered by the least adventurous members of our party was fine, and when they asked for cheese, it was newly grated parmesan. At the end, fruit salad was clearly freshly made. The rest, though, was depressing. Eight-year-old Ben ordered the sirloin steak. He wanted it medium rare. (He's my kind of boy, is Ben.) Instead it had been grilled to an elephant greyness and tasted, he said, 'liverish'. No eight-year-old should ever have to utter the word 'liverish' about their lunch. Ben's mum had the fish cakes, which were fine, if heavy on the potato, but came with four completely undercooked spears of geriatric asparagus and a dish of nasty dill sauce. It was oily and sweet and had a peculiar, industrial back taste. I've tasted nicer ointments.
A bacon and avocado salad brought thick-cut shards of bacon, and half an uncut and underripe avocado, the well of which had been filled with balsamic vinegar. It flooded across all the other ingredients when cut. But the worst was the pumpkin risotto: completely undercooked rice, a slick of oil around the outside and no pumpkin flavour, despite the cubes of it that littered the plate. This was a risotto made by somebody with no idea how to make risotto. And none of it was cheap. The 'risotto' was £8.50. The fish cakes a tenner, the steak a shade under £14. Only the children's meals, at £5.45, seemed reasonable, but it's all relative. And then there is the extra £4.50 they charge your children for going into the soft play. Of course they should charge, for those who only want a cup of coffee while their kids re-enact Lord of the Flies, but when you are spending a ton on lunch it seems opportunistic. We finished with bought-in cheesecake, watched my credit card smoulder, and concluded that Blue Kangaroo could be a terrific place - if only they knew how to do what they want to do.
