Bennigans: The perfect restaurant for families with children

Dining out with your young family can be more of a pain than a pleasure. This is particularly true when offspring are still at playground age, and colouring in kiddies’ menus is only fun for fifteen minutes.

And if you are anything like me, screen time overload is a no-no and hauling out an iPad or a phone and feeding your kids more television is the last resort.

When we go out with our boys, both the restaurant and its playground have to be great.

Pity not many get it right.

In the eternal search for the best steak in Johannesburg and paired with that a decent space for youngsters to expel some energy, we discovered a place called Bennigan’s. It is a small franchise steakhouse that, according to its website, has been around since 1972.

I had never heard of it until the brand replaced a Dros in Boksburg close to home and apparently there’s another in Bedfordview. Go figure how some of the best steaks I had recently enjoyed, and a great kid’s area have gone unnoticed for so long. But thank goodness I found it.

Bennigan’s has a fantastic, reasonably priced menu and, on the first try, my expectations were somewhat muted. After all, it’s just another restaurant with a kid’s area. But boy oh boy was I pleasantly surprised. Well, not just surprised, taken aback at the level of service at every single touchpoint, at the professional and caring childminders in the playground, at how quickly the waiters served and delivered from the kitchen, and how the manager did not just walk past and enquire about our time and taste, but actually stopped and waited for the answer.

The playground is large-ish, it is more than just a jungle gym pretending to be a kid’s area. There’s AstroTurf all-around, sanitiser, childminders and a pretend street that moats around the area.

It is well maintained, and the care is of such a high standard that you do not have to constantly commute between lunch or dinner and the playground. Mom and dad can actually take some time out, have a glass of something, and have a meal in a single uninterrupted sitting.

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And the meals are not simply good, they’re really really good. Part actual taste and quality, part atmosphere, part service and part fantastic prices just leave an overall good taste in your mouth when you leave. It makes you want to dig deeper into your pocket and tip as well as possible because it is just worth it.

My family has been twice, and to test consistency, I ordered the same items. So did my wife, and we did the same for the kids. It was toppers both times. Tender steaks, delicious ribs, no overpowering basting. Cheese sauce with real cheese, monkey gland sauce where you can actually taste the monkey, or imagine to. Grillers get it right, here, too.

Bennigan’s desserts are also not the prefabricated, fresh from a cardboard box claptrap some restaurants offer up on their sweets menu. The malva pudding is a slice, not a cookie-cutter tasteless square with a blob of watery custard. It is yum, and so is the ice-cream cake and well, the entire dessert menu as the glutton in me twisted my arm to try everything sweet, at least once.

Just like the Spur in Carnival City, some Panarottis outlets and Fahrenheit, Bennigans is taste and play worthy. It is a family destination where kids eat free on Tuesdays, and seconds and thirds would be in play each time if my tummy had the capacity.

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