Giggling Squid, the popular Thai restaurant on West Street recently launched a new children’s menu, or “Little Tapas for Little People”.
We took the opportunity to visit with our young children to check it out.
Pranee Laurillard, one of the owners of Giggling Squid and mum-of-three devised the menu to inspire kids to be more open minded with their food choices, and encourage them to try something new.
In practice this means that kids get to choose two dishes from a selection of Giggling Squid favourites – mild curries, noodles and rice dishes and easy to pick up and eat finger food. At just £5.95 including unlimited plain or sticky rice we thought this was pretty good value.
The “Little Tapas for Little People” menu comes on a sheet including a match-the-food-to-the-pictures game. Of course this is also useful in communicating to the children what the food choices look like, given that “Pad Thai” might well stump them! Food aside, for most children (definitely our children!) it is useful to have some distractions between courses – and the flipside of the menu is an activity and colouring sheet. You can even hand in the finished masterpiece for the chance to win a family meal for four.
Our choices included chicken satay with peanut sauce , sirloin steak strips, pork dumplings and chicken rice. Our kids are quite fussy eaters, and we probably wouldn’t have thought to try Thai food on them at home, but since the choices are at the milder end of tastes – it was all eaten, and enjoyed. What’s great about this – and the whole point of the menu – is that the children are having proper Thai food, not some generic, bland kids option. We did have prawn crackers to share at the start, which are an extra option on the menu – but they were a bit too spicy for our children to finish off. Then menu does state “These are a little spicy but yummy” to be fair – and of course, us adults polished them off no problem! 🙂
For an additional £2, we could add a children’s dessert. The choice is either a pancake-style roti or two scoops of ice cream, nicely presented with a bit of fruit. Perhaps next time we will persuade them to try the roti, but once they know there is ice cream……..
Don’t forget the adults!
We visited at lunchtime, so us adults also took advantage of the grown up sized tapas menu. Our previous visits had always been in the evening (kids with a babysitter!) and drawn from the à la carte menu, so this itself was a new experience for us.
My choice was the “Two Giggling Squids” Tapas Set at £11.95. For that I enjoyed Chicken Massaman Curry, Salt and Pepper Squid (no visit here is complete without it!!), Beef Salad and Jasmine Rice. So, great value – and I was stuffed afterwards!
In summary
We love dining at Giggling Squid, but it is a rare treat in terms of being restricted to the occasional evening when we arrange babysitting – we would not have even considered taking our very young children along before. Now, it is great to have a new option for family dining, and a welcome change to the usual pizza/pasta destinations. The food, setting and even colouring in stuff got a thumbs up from our kids – and at the very reasonable pricing – we’d really recommend you give it a try!
The full menu can be see here: www.gigglingsquid.com/menu/marlow/
Share your photos on Twitter and win a Tapas Party for 10!
Just as we were about to publish this, we noticed a Giggling Squid tweet with a competition for a slap up Thai Tapas party. If you do take your kids along for meal, and are on Twitter, give it a go:
Share a pic of your kids enjoying our NEW menu & share using @gigglingsquid + #GigglingKids for a chance to win a Thai Tapas Party for 10! pic.twitter.com/62Wzp2SgE7
— Giggling Squid (@GigglingSquid) May 30, 2017
