(This is the Tantrum, in which Dadwagon’s writers debate one question over the course of a week. For previous Tantrums, click here.)

This is, my beautiful colleagues, an ill-formed question. Mainly because of the wording–“fancy restaurant” implies a very specific dining experience: hushed, candlelit, and deeply inappropriate for a babbling, burbling baby.

But the truth is, “fancy” dining in New York isn’t limited to the leather-and-linen Le Bernardin establishments. It hasn’t been for a long time. You can have a $200 hunk of pork served to you by a waiter with a neck tattoo at Ssäm Bar. You can wash down a half-dozen Malpeque Oysters with Rose de Cuvaison in the lovely, noisy Balthazar, where the clang of Plateaux de Fruits de Mer is probably louder than your crotchfruit could ever be.

So, as with bringing your baby to a bar, it all depends on the context (a point that was ably made by commenter Candace MacDonald of Mama Undercover in a comment to Christopher’s tantrum). Bring your kid to a “fancy” restaurant? No. Bring your kid to a great restaurant? Sure, if you think the expense and potential hassle are worth it.

For my brood, confined by time and budget, a place like The Mermaid Inn, a few blocks from our house, is about as fine as we dine. We met a couple of our friends there a while back, with the kids (4 and 2 years old) in tow. It was fine. They loved the Miracle Fish. They ate well and didn’t scream. Yes, having a kid at any sitdown restaurant means waiting for them to knock a drink over, worrying if they’re gonna freak out, sizing up your nearest quick exit. But those are all manageable scenarios.

One thing that kept coming up in comments during the slag-wars over Babies in Bars was the idea that we should be taking our kids to Chuck E. Cheese’s or Applebee’s, because, you know, that’s where kids belong. That is, of course, total bullpuckey. Kids shouldn’t have to eat crap food just because they’re young. And I’m not against kid’s menus–they’ve got the right portions and lower prices–but it shouldn’t all be chicken fingers and mac ‘n’ cheese.

There is also good training in taking kids to restaurants that aren’t Shakey’s (although that “bunch of lunch” buffet sure sounds healthy). Particularly as kids get older, it’s not a bad skill to learn how to sit and behave. My brother and I were around restaurants a lot growing up (my grandmother ran one in Key West), and despite our many failings, we got good at being docile while eating out.

This led to what must have been one of my father’s great moments as a parent: In Miami in the the early 80’s, he had taken the both of us to some kind of steakhouse, I believe, something uncharacteristically upmarket. It may well have been one of those “sorry about the divorce” dinners. My brother and I were around 10 and 12 years old. We ate with our silverware. We had our small conversations; we didn’t screech, kick, claw, howl, yelp or yawp. And then, from a corner of the restaurant, having just finished his own dinner, came José Ferrer, the Puerto Rican movie star (he won an Oscar, folks, Google it). He actually went up to my father, unsolicited, and in that rich Cyrano voice of his, complimented him on how well-behaved we were. A nice moment, and not just for my father. Those were angry years, for my brother and especially for me. We would fight constantly, a running rage that occasionally involved scissors or rackets or other weapons. And this is something I can see in my own daughter: Kids don’t like being bad. We didn’t like being angry and acting out. We just couldn’t help it, and that made us miserable as well. So to have actually done well for an hour straight, and then to have Puerto Rico’s most famous son search us out to praise us: That was a beautiful thing.

A few years ago I was in San Juan, walking through the Santa Maria cemetery, and there was Ferrer’s grave (he died in the early nineties). I hadn’t know he was buried there, but I was glad to see it. I spend enough time regretting how angry I was as a kid; seeing Ferrer there was an unexpected and pleasant reminder of at least one night where my brother and I held back and did well, even at a “fancy” restaurant.

Earlier entries in this week’s Tantrum: here, here, and here.

Ickle and Lardee, though I'm not sure who is who

Our friend at the superfine blog Pacing the Panic Room finally got that shot of the baby teeth, and in passing, referred to the “adorable things” at My Milk Toof. I have a policy of clicking on any link that promises cute and/or creepy content, so I went. Turns out that Milk Toof offers both: it’s a photoblog from artist Inhae Lee that follows the adventures of two molars, Ickle and Lardee, as they do adorable things around the house. Strange and actually pretty entertaining: check it out for yourself.

Doesn't that just scream "playtime?"

Sometimes you have to wonder what the fine folk who run New York City are thinking.

The Times ran this piece yesterday about a playground in a housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, for many years one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods and still an area with more than its share of violent crime. The playground has a jungle gym set up to look like a prison, complete with the word “Jail” printed on it, and a cell door and prison bars.

A few locals, not surprisingly, were not amused. Said one parent of a 6-year-old: “it was like promoting kids to go to jail.”

Protests to city officials have been made of late, largely spearheaded by a professor at the City University of New York named Lumumba Bandele. Badele pointed out to the the Times that “this community along with six others in New York City makes up the majority of the prison population in New York State,” a context which makes the playground feature “insulting.”

I tend to agree. Not that kids shouldn’t be allowed to play prison games if they want–I certainly did. But to locate it in Bed-Stuy (the city said one other such jungle gym exists but wouldn’t say where) is insensitive at best and racial profiling at worst.

Readers, go check out the photos of it in the article. Tell me if I’m wrong.

(This is the Tantrum, in which Dadwagon’s writers debate one question over the course of a week. For previous Tantrums, click here.)

Are you out of your mind? Of course not.

The social contract holds that a first-rate dinner should not be spoiled by many things, and intrusive behavior from a nearby high chair is one of them. If you can truly guarantee that your child is an angel throughout the meal, then you will be allowed in. But I challenge you to make such an ironclad guarantee without the involvement of a tranquilizer dart. I’d never subject you to dealing with a charmingly ebullient little kid at dinner when you’re paying a fortune and expecting something transcendent; I’m asking you to do the same.

The fact is, at a serious restaurant—and I’m talking about Daniel or Le Bernardin here, not your neighborhood tuna-burger kinda place, where child-friendliness is best gauged on a case-by-case basis—the dinner is essentially a performance, with subtleties and complexities intended for adults. (“Restaurants are to people in the eighties what theatre was to people in the sixties,” as Nora Ephron put it in her script for When Harry Met Sally...) If a child is old enough to see an O’Neill play, then I’d say he’s ready for David Bouley. Not till then.

Besides! The whole point of serious dining is to get the hell out of the house and do something grown-up for a couple of hours. Preferably after dark! You keep your kid at home, I’ll do the same, and we can clink glasses from adjoining tables. Given the hassle and cost of a sitter, not to mention the dinner check itself, it will happen very, very infrequently.