The Beard and I are very social beings and having Baby J has not changed that – now we just make our plans around naptime but that doesn’t mean we have to stay home all the time! Of course when Baby J was still teeny tiny it was really easy to take him places because he could chill out in his Doona or on someone’s lap and not cause too much chaos.

Those days are long gone now (think knife-grabbing and wine-spilling) and these days we need to be quite selective about where we go, for the happiness of our child and our own sanity (nevermind everyone else at the restaurant).

Since this has recently become a thing for us, I’ve decided to do some research and let you all in on a few secret (or not-so-secret) places that are kid-friendly in Cape Town – and hopefully wallet-friendly too.

First up, is The Brasserie in Tokai. 

We used to live in Tokai so we’ve been fans of the Brasserie for a long time. On gorgeous days, it’s wonderful to sit at one of their outside tables, and on crappy days it’s nice and cosy inside.

Their food has always been good and they have a few specials which are worth going for:

241 Pizza on Mondays 4 – 10pm

241 Pasta on Tuesdays 4 – 10pm

The Brasserie - pizza

*Please see here for Ts & Cs regarding the specials

On the surface, the Brasserie doesn’t seem very child-friendly. There isn’t a jungle gym or a play area or any kind of space dedicated to kids. However, they have an early bird family special which will make everyone happy:

Between 4 and 6pm DAILY, order a main meal and your kid eats from the kiddies’ menu FREE.

We went with some friends for the pizza special (so we didn’t get the kiddies special because you can only make use of one special at a time) so the adults shared four pizzas and the two kidlets shared a kiddies margherita pizza. Now you can judge me all you want for feeding my 14-month old pizza but this was his first time and it was an absolute hit. We were in and out in a couple hours, which was just enough time to avoid a meltdown and be home for bathtime.

Best of all, our food bill came to R320 for 4 adults and 2 littles, which is not bad.

(The wine bill of course added a fair amount onto the food bill but that’s just the way the Beard rolls…)

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