Eating in Europe with Toddlers

We’ve officially been on the road for 17 days. We are a 1/3 of a way through our trip!

We didn’t know what to expect when eating out at restaurants with our girls. Would they have a kids menu? Would there be anything our picky toddler would eat? Do they have high chairs?

Well like many life lessons I’ve learned, we learned by trail and error! Our first few times out to eat in France were disasters. We quickly learned that the tables are tiny, and little baby hands are very quick to grab things they shouldn’t! Also, our picky toddler lived off of pizza and McDonald’s while we were in France. We had such a hard time finding foods she liked, we ended up going to McDonald’s, or even Burger King a few times, just to ensure she’d eat a full meal. It was not the healthiest meal, but I was just happy to see her eat at that point.

In Germany, we switched things up a bit. We had a large supermarket nearby, so we stocked up on food and packed lunches before we left the house. We did end up at Burger King a few times, but we were getting better at planning! We also found a restaurant in Waldshut that made Elliana a grilled cheese to “takeaway” as they say here in Europe. It was so helpful when we wanted to try this German restaurant, because we got Elliana her sandwich to go, and I packed her snacks and juice. So she ate her meal, while we got our meal.

In Italy we are keeping up with the same routine we have in Germany. In the few days that we’ve been here, we’ve only ate out twice. The first time, we fed Elliana at home before we left. It was a sit down restaurant, so we got her gelato to keep her occupied while we ate our first real Italian meal! It was amazing. We only eat at the outside tables, so we have more space and we can leave her in the stroller. She enjoyed her gelato while we at in peace, which rarely happens.

The second time we ate out, we made sure to get our food to takeaway. We had to make two stops, one for mom and dad and one for Elliana. She doesn’t eat burritos, so we found a pizza by the slice place that was perfect.

I don’t include Sophie in any of this, because she literally eats anything. We try to get her a high chair and if not we take turns holding her. Sometimes we aim to eat at her nap time, so she sleeps in the carrier while we eat.

As far as eating at home and grocery shopping. We’ve definitely found it hard to find food for Elliana. They have typical things like strawberries and apples, Nutella sandwiches and grilled cheese. Plain pasta is always a win with “baby cheese” as she calls it. But she gets burnt out the same things every day. What we haven’t found is Mac n cheese, tortillas for quesadillas, good chicken nuggets (France has frozen chicken nuggets and she didn’t like them), nacho cheese and chips, bagels, the list goes on!!

I am proud of her for trying new things. She’s ate eclairs, croissants, a very different type of pizza we had in Switzerland, the apple juice in Italy has pulp in it and she surprised me by actually liking it. I know food is a big adjustment for her. I happy she’s finally eating 3 meals a day again.

To summarize, if you are traveling with children and want to eat out, I suggest the following

• Bring a stroller and use it as a high chair
• Eat outside
• Bring a toddler cup, (all the cups here are glass!)
• Bring a separate meal for the toddler as a backup
• Try to aim eating at nap time