“Mom, this service is horrible.”

“Mom, this mac & cheese is nasty.”

“Mom, how can a restaurant run out of ketchup?”

My 5-year-old is a food critic. She pays attention to every detail of each dining experience and has a comment about everything.

While some people may think this is obnoxious, my husband and I find it hilarious. The really funny thing is that most of the time she’s right!

Case and point. We walk into a rather new restaurant and get seated. We get handed our menus. We decide what we want. We wait. And wait. And wait. No one has come over to even acknowledge us.

“Mommy, they haven’t even come to ask about our drinks.”

She’s right. We’ve been sitting for nearly ten minutes and no one has come over. It really does border on poor service and my kid knows it.

“Mommy, the service here isn’t too great.”

Thankfully she doesn’t say it too loudly because just as she gives her first critique, the waitress finally comes over to take our drink order. Of course my daughter is all smiles. Little does this waitress know she’s being watched by one of the harshest food critics on the east coast.

“Mommy, she’s not too friendly.”

OMG! This kid doesn’t quit. But, once again, she’s kinda right. The waitress kinda seemed like she was either tired or didn’t want to be there. My kid picked up on it right away.

I just nod my head in agreement.

When the waitress comes back to take our food order, both my daughters ordered for themselves. The waitress just looked at them as if they were speaking another language. My daughter gives me that “what’s wrong with her?” look. I pretend not to notice. Instead I translate for the waitress so we get the right food. God forbid the wrong stuff comes out!

So now we wait for our food. And wait. And wait.

“Mommy this is taking forever. I’m hungry.”

Then little sis chimes in too. My mini-food critic in training. I try to tell them to be patient, but I’m hungry too and it has been a long time.

Sigh.

Thankfully once the food finally arrives, it’s actually pretty good. Both my kids eat without complaints. While this may not make up for the slow service, it certainly is a brownie point.

Now onto the ice cream that comes with their meals. They order chocolate. Another waitress brings out vanilla. They stare as if they were just handed a bowl of boogers.

We tell this new waitress we ordered chocolate. She tells us they don’t have chocolate. That’s all fine and dandy, but why didn’t our waitress tell us? That’s a strike.

Ugh.

My kids eat their vanilla ice cream. It is ice cream after all.

When we’re all done, I ask my little food critic what she thought.

“It was okay. Food wasn’t bad, but they need to work on the service part.”

Lol, from the mouths of babes!