Barbados is well known for its smart restaurants, which offer top quality cuisine on the beach and along the cliffs of the west Coast. They have delightful settings, overlooking the sand or a bay, lit by flaming torches to a gentle background wash of west coast waves. They are ideal for a romantic evening out, and are part of the fun of a visit to Barbados.

Not when you are travelling travelling with the brood, however, when the requirements are rather different. You might be lucky to get a moment to yourselves, but otherwise romance is not top of the list. Instead, you are trying to get the little Things fed with minimum hassle and quickly (there’s an unpredictable fuse fizzling away in the background there). And if we’re honest children are not really going to appreciate the masterful creations of leading chefs anyway, unless they are accompanied by chips and are slathered with tomato ketchup. Oh sure, if there’s a nice setting for the adults to enjoy in the brief moments that they’re not on duty, then that’s a bonus, but frankly the simpler and the quicker the better.

In early 2006, James Henderson, the editor of Definitive Caribbean, was lucky enough to be joined for Half Term in Barbados by his two children - Thing 1 (6, a boy) and Thing 2 (4, a girl), oh, and their mother too (She who Knows). It was great to spend time in the islands with them, passing on the pleasure of the Caribbean to another generation.

For more information about the restaurants they visited, see below.

Cocomos, Pizzaz, High Tide Café, East Coast, Up Beat drive-through Chefette, Oistins Fish Fry, The Lone Star

Also, please see stories and reviews about the Barbados Beaches we visited.

For general information, please see in our Barbados guide about Children in Barbados.

BARBADOS RESTAURANTS
It is not hard to find places to take children out to eat in Barbados. While there are probably more along the south coast of the island than on the West Coast, there are plenty there too. A few of the ‘sites’, but by no means all of them, also have cafes where you can eat after visiting. Another option is the beach bars. Often we went to the beach late in the afternoon, making sure to choose beaches with a bar where we would be able to get a children’s meal, and feed them before we went home.

Just so you know, Thing 1 and Thing 2 are not really restaurant-trained. That is nearly as in potty-trained, but instead involves the ability to sit quietly for an hour and a half while their parents try to have a civilized meal. (Yes, unbelievably, there are children that can do this, or so I am told. Once, on a trip to Italy, Thing 1 and Thing 2 managed to disrupt a whole hotel Christmas lunch, when they unwittingly showed a dining room full of normally well behaved Italian children that there was another alternative - get down and make whoopee in the aisles). But running feral from a restaurant isn’t really a problem in Barbados. Several that we visited are on the beach anyway - so they can run off and amuse themselves on the sand - leaving you parents an adult moment or two if you are lucky. Also, restaurant staff are generally easy-going and don’t mind children running around under their feet.

What we generally try to do is to keep Things 1 and Thing 2 interested as long as possible, by making them join in ordering the meal and quizzing them on the capitals of the world, play I Spy and make them do their time tables, but eventually we let them drift off from the table onto the beach or into the garden. Until the meal comes, that is, when their interested is usually guaranteed.

Cocomos
At Cocomos they know to fill a child’s glass only half full. I am not making positive ‘glass half full’ versus a negative ‘glass half empty’ comment here, exposing a certain view on life. It’s just that, as every parent knows, a child will let you know soon enough if they want more to drink, but when they knock the glass over, only half as much spills on your lap. Cocomos see plenty of children and handles them pretty well. There is a special children’s menu,. Even crayons to play with.

From the beach side, Cocomos is obviously a beach bar, but it seems in an odd position when you arrive from inland. It is the only bright moment in a rather workaday parking lot, a splash of electric lime green and earthy royal blue next to glass fronted offices and a police station. Inside, though, the restaurant is open to the air and built as a beach bar should be, with straw thatch and brightly painted wooden poles. At the front there is a deck with a pretty criss-cross balustrade. The green and the blue of the decoration reflect the palm trees and the sea, which frame the view from inside.

We passed on the flying fish fingers, but ordered a chicken and chips and a jumbo hot dog off the children’s menu, plus a couple of starters that everyone could tuck into. They also do an excellent fruit punch at Cocomos, so we had three of those.

In a pause after ordering a tuna salad sandwich, I spotted a lizard clinging to a beam in the corner of the room. I took Thing 1 and Thing 2 across for a look. It was about eight inches long, with a pouch under its neck, which it was expanding and contracting. And, most satisfyingly, it was bright green, in fact the exact green of the restaurant, the electric lime green. It might have been camouflaging itself, except that it was sitting on a white section of the wall. Thing 1 and Thing 2 were rapt. For all of ten seconds. And then we managed ten minutes of discussion of lizards, catching insects with their tongues, reptiles, tropical animals. All quite educational, I began to think.

‘But, Dad’, says Thing 1, ‘when’s my chicken and chips coming?’

Oh well.

It was a busy lunch (Cocomos is quite a popular lunch spot with working Bajans as well as with tourists) and so it was a while before our meals arrived. In the meantime Thing 1 and Thing 2 drifted off to the beach for a while. Hah! A chance for us to chat with our friend living in Barbados.

Our meals eventually arrived, so I went out to find that Thing 1 and Thing 2 had befriended a couple of other small holidaymakers. I called them in for their meal. That was gobbled up in seconds and they were off again.

It was hard to get them off the beach for pudding - they were enjoying themselves with a boy whose bucket, spade and..., well..., castle they had borrowed - until I mentioned the words ‘ice cream’. They were back in like a shot, polished it off, and then back out again. More time to be an adult.

Cocomos is smack in the middle of the West Coast and so as well as a good spot for lunch and for feeding children in the early evening, it is a good option for a less expensive evening out. Once the little’uns have cleared off, it gears up a notch or two. It is still burgers and fish platters, but the atmosphere is always lively and easy going. The best thing about it, though, is that it handles children well.

Pizzaz
I have often looked at Pizzaz as I drive down the west coast of Barbados, emerging from the momentary jam that is Holetown, speeding up slightly past the gingerbread cottages of the Chattel Village Shopping Centre, and then there it is, set back from the road across open grass, dressed in red and green, an open-air veranda with classic Caribbean shutters angled on pegs.

After wanting to go in for so long, it turned out that it wasn’t quite what I hoped, an easy place to idle awhile, watching life go by and enjoying sitting on the veranda. Actually it’s more of a self-serve and watch the sport on the telly type of a place, while picking over a plate. If it wasn’t quite right for me, though, it hit the spot for Thing 2, who is happy with pizza. And for Thing 1 it turned out to be, well, right up his street. He had his eyes glued on the telly from the moment we arrived till eventually we lifted him bodily and carried him out.

Judging by the name, I assumed Pizzaz was pizzas with a certain verve. It is a bit broader than that. As well as pizzas there are burgers and plates of fish. It is also quite popular as a take away, so there was a constant stream of people wandering in and out. We walked up to the counter.

So, Thing Two, what would you like to drink? I asked as I was standing in the queue.

‘Apple, please, Daddy.’

I was so surprised by the unsolicited ‘please’, that I completely missed the fact that we would get ‘golden apple’ rather than regular European apple. Actually I did notice, but in my moment of surprise I thought ‘Hey, let’s show her something new,’ and let it slide. ‘Maybe she would like it.’ Mistake.

Thing 1 was taken by the television of course. Not sport, though. Any telly, I guess. This was the National Geographic Channel showing a programme about different faiths around the world. A man was dangling by a series of fishhooks. Still it was the telly and that was enough.

‘Thing 1, what would you like to eat?’ Repeat. Repeat. I tried again, leaning forward and speaking directly into his ear.

‘Hello-o, Earth to Thing 1. What - would - you - like - to - eat - ?’

Thing 1 looks up. A stare with a look of ‘But you’re interrupting my television viewing’. He turned back.

‘I will order you a burger and chips then,’ said She who Knows. No response. Thing 2 opted for a pizza.

After a few minutes our number came up. We gathered our meal at the counter and returned to the table.

‘Eeeech,’ said Thing 2. ‘This isn’t apple juice’. Strictly speaking, she was correct. I did my best to persuade her that it was just as good a drink, that it was interesting to taste something new. No. It wasn’t going to work. She’s pretty determined once she has set her mind on something. Oh well, back to the counter.

Thing 1 still had his eyes glued to the telly, his hand moving methodically, robotically,passing chips from plate to mouth. A man was walking over hot coals.

‘I don’t like my pizza,’ said Thing 2.

Well, to be fair to her, the crust was a bit cardboardy at the edges. Seemed the pizzas didn’t actually have the pizzaz after all. No problem with the burgers, though. They were obviously good. Thing 1 kept shovelling it until there was no more left on his plate. In fact I could have sworn his arm still kept moving back and forth to his mouth for a while even after there was no food left on his plate. On the telly a man was busy beating himself with a whip drawing blood on his back. In the end I picked Thing 1 up, put him under my arm and we walked back to the car.

High Tide Café, East Coast
Every trip to Barbados should include a trip to the east coast. It’s a fun day’s drive to see how different the island is on the other side. If you saw only the West and South Coasts you might think the island was one big suburb. You’d miss the fields of sugar cane that have patterned the island for centuries and the surprisingly fertile and beautiful interior.

On the east coast you also see that the terrain of Barbados is not as flat as you would expect from the accusation levelled at it. The hills tumble down nearly a thousand feet to the coast, where waves barrel in off the Atlantic, thundering on the reef. They are so big and powerful that the shoreline is receding at something like a foot a year. In places it has left behind some huge free-standing rocks. They are perched on a base that is being steadily eroded from underneath and they look as though they should topple over at any moment. Some time over the next twenty thousand years they probably will.

The place that is usually recommended on the east coast is the Round House. If you can get in, that is. Not being able to, we stopped at the High Tide Café down the road. This seems like a fairly local bar inside, but there is a small terrace at the front with several red parasols, and they serve lunch. While the West Coast has responded fairly much to the needs of the tourist industry, the High Tide Café is more typical of the Caribbean as it used to be. Everything moved at well..., what you might call a serene pace. You have to be prepared to take it easy. But there are a couple of things to do while you are waiting for your meal. There is a nice section of flat grass just across the road and then the shoreline, with one of those magnificent rocks. Things 1 and Thing 2 went over and played there.

For those waiting behind there was local music to listen to on the bar stereo. And on the day we were there it was playing a round of classic calypsos. So, I just sat enjoying them and drinking a beer in the shade of the parasol. The meals came eventually, chicken and chips for Thing 1 and Thing 2 and a plate of fish for us two.

About half way through the meal I heard it, a calypso that had been scratching at the brainstem for days. Tiny Winy. It has the magnificent chorus ‘Tiny Winy, shake your bum bum’. Thing 2 is sometimes called Tiny, and she gets, on occasion, a bit whiny, at those rather tiring moments late in the day when it all gets a bit much for both of us (and everyone else within about 100 yards) and so over the years I have sung this song to her. Now they began to sing it to one another. Who knows what naughtiness the calypsonian was singing about with the original song (I suspect it is more about the bum bum than any whining), but the catchphrase became the leitmotif of the holiday, particularly when the whining got too much.

The food at the High Tide Café is simpler than at the Round House, but there is quite an authentic West Indian atmosphere to the place and their plates of fish aren’t bad.

Up Beat Chefette
While we parents obviously enjoy the restaurants in Barbados for their elegant settings and generally good fare, a different logic clearly drives a child’s mind. For some reason they just love the excitement of a drive-through meal in the car. Presumably it’s all those saturated fats and the fact that they don’t have to sit up properly at table. And anyway, they don’t have to worry about a greasy steering wheel, do they? They just wipe their hands on the seat...

But a treat it is, so one evening, as we made our way down the ABC Highway behind the West Coast we relented. The decibel and the whine count admittedly rocketed when we reached the Warrens roundabout.

‘Oh, go oooon! Just once... Please... (Wow, I thought, another unsolicited please) Go ooon. Now!’

The area round here carries the delightful name Up Beat (presumably because marching soldiers were getting tired by this stage and they had to up the tempo or perhaps they were racing for home). Anyway, we pulled in and went through the routine. I suppose I can see a certain fascination in speaking into a funnel out of the car window one moment, then driving a few yards and being handed a bagful of your favourite food the next. And if you apply the logic of fun, rather than the bald twenty-first century logic of ‘pays yer money and gets yer goods’, then you can see there might be something magic about it. As an adult it is wonderful to see the excitement in two small children at any rate.

As we drove, and the smell of the chips overloaded with salts and fats wafted forward to the front of the car, I decided I could do with a chip or two, so I leant back and asked. And to hell with the greasy steering wheel.

‘Oh, go oooon! Just one... Please...Go ooon.’

Eventually I got a small handful.

It’s not that I’d recommend Chefette over the other places to eat on the island, but it is good to know that it is there.

Oistins Fish Fry
Oistins Fish Fry has begun to be a bit of an institution in Barbados. Oistins itself - once a fishing village that has now been absorbed into the pretty much continuous suburb of the South Coast of Barbados - still has plenty of the bright blue and yellow boats sitting on its shore and dragged up onto the sand, but the town probably does a better trade nowadays out of the evening barbecues on the waterfront than it does as a fishing port. People come from all over the south coast to sit for a while and eat a simple plate of fish and salad or chips.

You can see it all happening from the road as you drive past in the early evening, particularly late in the week. A large lot is lined with brightly painted stalls - Miss Anne, Miss June, Crazy Eddie and Pat’s Place. And on a busy night these are supplemented by other stalls selling anything from ice cream to paintings and wooden carvings. At one stage fairy lights in the shape of fish to hang above the street were erected to herald the town as a fishy destination, but by the time we visited the lights no longer worked and were hanging at an angle.

In the way of West Indian crowds the atmosphere was easy going, but we kept Thing 1 and Thing 2 fairly close at hand - just because there were so many people and they could easily have lost sight of us. We wandered the stalls, where slabs of kingfish were being turned and sizzled and mounds of coleslaw were scooped in great spoons and then thwacked onto paper plates. There was the thump of reggae coming from one direction and soca from another. The smell of grilling fish hung in the air.

Then it all began to go wrong. Thing 2 doesn’t like any nosie above 25 decibels. So when she came with me to get a drink from the pub, where the noise level was near-stratospheric, I was not popular. She wasn’t even interested in the people dancing, which would normally catch her attention completely.

We settled into a table on the sea side of the stalls and waited... never a good option with two children, beginning to bicker, on an unpredictable fuse - and watched as one poor waitress tried to cover about sixty or seventy diners... People were ordering three drinks at a time because they knew it was their only chance. After a while it was time to douse the coming volcano, to distract Thing 1 and Thing 2 before they blew. So I headed off for another walk, dragging a reluctant Thing 1 with me, to see if I could interest him in wooden carvings or craft. No, I feared as much. Woolly red rasta hats, though. Now it was my turn to get the hump. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you.’ We settled on a rasta pencil. Instead of a rubber on the end there was a small set of dreads.

We arrived back in the nick of time. For a moment all was quiet and we could contemplate the food. My kingfish was a little dry and chewy, but She who Know’s tuna was right on the money. In the end, I am sad to say that for Thing 1 and Thing 2, the out evening out at the Oistins Fish Fry wasn’t really a success. I wondered if it was because they were too young, and yes, most of the children were older than them, but there were other small ones and they seemed ok. Probably tired. Maybe another year.

The Lone Star
I have always been a fan of the Lone Star. Set on a wooden deck just above the water, with wire balustrades and a blue canvas cover like a sail, it catches the essence of the Barbados West Coast and its relaxed stylishness. Going there with children, however, removes the relaxed bit from the equation, turning what is otherwise a leisurely, genteel experience into something like a spike through the head. I just sat there wondering what Thing 1 and Thing 2 would destroy next.

To be fair, it is way out of order to expect them to stay seated for the three hours of a leisurely adult lunch. We thought we would muddle through. Little did we know, Lord of the Flies was about to kick off around us. It culminated with me running in a panic across the dining deck, wondering if a woman in an incredibly expensive summer dress was about to be doused with a jet of water.

The setting at the Lone Star was a pretty as ever. You come down the wooden stairs and the deck, just a couple of feet above the sand, is neatly set with white and blue tables and chairs. We were given a table near the centre of the deck and savoured the view and the setting. Mu-um! Can we go down to the beach...? To keep Thing 1 and Thing 2 occupied, we got them involved in ordering the meal. Then onto times tables. Then I Spy again. ‘Can we play another game, now, mummy?’ We just knew we should keep them seated with us as long as possible, to delay the moment when they went fissile.

Eventually though, we had to let them go, and off they went, chasing in and out of the table nuclei like errant electrons, gently at first but then later agitated and excited as they discovered the fun. They co-opted (or is that led astray?) three other children. At which point the effect became less of electrons buzzing around and more of some macabre nuclear experiment. I was constantly shifting in my chair, craning to see what they were up to, waiting for it all to go fissile, so to speak.

There was a respite as the first course came. A moment’s peace and the world began to look normal. Five minutes later, though, the panic began to mount again, as they got down and ran feral through the tables and chairs and onto the beach.

Screams on the beach were one thing, but a moment later, in the middle of my herb and lemon basted chicken, I looked up and saw that the small posse of five children had found the jet-spray at the front entrance to the restaurant. Normally this is used for washing the sand off your feet after a walk along the beach... In the hands of Thing 1 it looked like a weapon. He was wielding it dangerously close to a couple that were clearly Barbados regulars (he had the demeanor of a senior CEO) on their constitutional winter break. I could just see it being turned, with a mistaken flick of the wrist, full on, soaking them. I ran across and apologised.

‘Oh, no’, said the man, with slightly gruff northern English accent, ‘they’re having a great time!’

Next time we go, though, it’ll be as adults only.

We hope you have enjoyed these reviews on the Restaurants of Barbados. If you would like to discover more useful hints about what to do with your children in Barbados this summer and autumn, or to see other reviews and stories about family visits by Thing 1 and Thing 2, please see the Beaches of Barbados and Barbados Sites and Activities, including reviews of Harrison’s Cave and the Barbados Wildlife Reserve.

Please also see information about Child-friendly developments in other Caribbean islands and for general information about children in Barbados, please see the section in our Barbados island guide, Children in Barbados.