GA Restaurant Adds Surcharge for Poorly Behaved Kids

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Over the years, there have been stories about places that have chosen to become child-free, or at least have child-free and/or “quiet” options:

• Several airlines that offer “Adults Only” zones
• The naughtiest adults only hotels & resorts in the world
• Margaritaville’s first adults-only all-inclusive resort
• The CA restaurant that only allows well-behaved children

That latter one, Old Fisherman’s Grotto, is a restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf, a dining and shopping district in Monterey, CA. It’s been open since 1950 and is currently run by the original owner’s son. Their website plainly states their children’s policy. Their reviews on Yelp have a handful of comments about the policy, but not as many as when we originally wrote about the place 2+ years ago.

It turns out that there’s another restaurant in the mountains of northern Georgia that also has a child-related policy.

Toccoa Riverside Restaurant has been open since the early 1990s. It sustained a fire in 2012 (here’s the news, as reported on Tripadvisor), and was deemed a total loss. But by 2013, it was back up and running.

The restaurant is proud of its fresh trout, wonderful steaks, fried oysters, and a terrific selection of salads and sides. It’s also truly a “riverside” restaurant and the view is pretty gorgeous. From their website:However, Toccoa Riverside Restaurant also has its quirk about kids. Well, officially, it’s more about parenting – and it’s even on their website. They have what they call an “Adult Surcharge,” “for adults unable to parent.” It’s right at the bottom of their menu.

And apparently they mean it.

Lindsay Landmann, 36, told TODAY.com in late October that she, her husband and 3 other couples were at the restaurant with 11 kids in total, ranging in age from 3 to 8. She thought the kids were well-behaved, but each party got a bill for $50 because the manager said they had been “too loud.”

Food & Wine reports that the restaurant’s owner, Tim Richter, told WSB-TV that the parenting surcharge began “a few years ago,” during the early part of the pandemic. “We want parents to be parents,” he said, adding that he never even threatened to charge someone until “a couple of weeks ago” when a group with nine kids dined at the restaurant.

The restaurant has 2.5 stars on Yelp, with multiple 1-star reviews. I thought many of the 1-star reviews would be because the “no kid” policy hit the news last month. Of the 405 Yelp reviews they have, 162 are 1-star, and of those, only 14 are from late October. All the rest, dating as far back as 2013, are complaints about lousy food, nasty staff and the crabby manager.

Their reviews on Google appear to be more positive, with an average of 4.1. Their presence on Tripadvisor, where they are the #17 restaurant of 60 in the area, is somewhere in between, with a 3.5 rating.

As someone who doesn’t have kids, I admit to appreciating restaurants that don’t have loud kids running around. Then again, there are some restaurants where I wouldn’t be surprised to see more rambunctious children milling about. A moderately-priced (entrees: $19-$39) riverside restaurant in a tourist mountain town that advertises dogs allowed on the porch, kids are naturally going to be part of what I’d expect to see and hear.

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