After several years of managing restaurants, I eventually learned that I did not, in fact, want to work in one every day. I am too much of a morning person, for one thing. I also like writing at a desk in soft pants and drinking coffee that hasn’t gone cold behind the host stand. But I knew I still wanted restaurants to be part of my life. So I became a food writer, which allowed me to stay close to the people, places, flavors, rituals, and stories that had shaped me.

Then Covid happened.

And, at almost the exact same time, I became a mother. My daughter was born in April 2020, in those strange, tender, terrifying early weeks when the world had gone quiet and every version of normal life felt suspended. Restaurants were shuttered or scrambling. Dining rooms were dark. The bustling, generous, sensory world I had built so much of my identity around suddenly felt impossibly far away.

That part of me did not die, exactly. But it went into a deep, deep coma.

Following the birth of my daughter, and my son 18 months later, restaurants became less like my natural habitat and more like a complicated logistical equation. Could we get a babysitter? And if we were going to bring the kiddos, could we get a reservation early enough? Would there be something the kids might eat? Would we bother everyone? Would someone spill a drink, refuse to sit down, cry over the wrong color cup, require an emergency walk around the block before the appetizers arrived? Dining out with young children can feel like trying to conduct a symphony during a major weather event.

Then, about a year ago, my family moved to Chicago. And slowly, unexpectedly, my restaurant life began to come back to me.

Not at all as it had been before. I am not closing down wine bars at midnight or lingering over four-hour tasting menus. These days, dinner often happens at 5:30. Someone is usually coloring. There might be a rousing game of tic tac toe. There will almost certainly be negotiating for fries. I keep wipes in my bag. I know which child is likely to melt down first and which one will suddenly become extremely invested in trying my salad, but only the crumbles of cheese.

But still: something has shifted. Chicago has given me a renaissance in my food life, a rebirth of my love for restaurants. Even more surprisingly, it has given me a way to share that joy with my children, now four and six, in a way that feels real and not performative. They are learning that restaurants are places of pleasure and care; where people gather, taste, talk, and belong. They are learning how to order, how to wait, how to try a bite, how to say thank you. They are learning, slowly and imperfectly, how to be in the world.

And I get to watch them fall a little bit in love with the industry I have loved for so long.

That warms my heart in a way I don’t know how to say without sounding sentimental, though maybe this is a sentimental subject. Because for me, dining out with my children in Chicago is not just about convenience, or good kids’ menus, or restaurants that tolerate a little chaos. It is about getting something back that I thought I had lost. It is about finding a new version of an old love. It is about realizing that my restaurant life did not end when I became a mother. It simply changed tables.

Here are a few places where the whole family finds happy moments: