Somewhere between the arrival of your first child and their first public meltdown over the wrong shape of pasta, your own parents quietly change, from the people whose restaurant enthusiasms once made you slide down in your seat to the reinforcements you would now pay handsomely to have beside you at the table. Grandparents, it turns out, are wasted on the childless.
At Bravo at Cracker Bay, the idea works beautifully. The restaurant sits at the water’s edge at Westhaven, where the comings and goings of the marina keep a four-year-old and her grandfather equally entertained, and where lunch, given the smallest encouragement, drifts happily deep into the afternoon. There is space to gather, in the light-filled conservatories and out along the water, and space to retreat, in a dedicated playroom, where the youngest members of the party can vanish into the moment the novelty of sitting nicely wears thin. Nothing extends a lunch quite like children who have somewhere better to be, and their absence hands the adults back the small pleasures of a finished conversation, a properly considered wine order and a dessert nobody has to apologise for. Three tiers of the same family, each given both proximity and privacy.
The kitchen keeps going from morning until late, opening at 8am with French toast tiramisu, Turkish eggs, and a bacon butty for anyone who arrives hungry off a boat, before lunch settles into freshly shucked market oysters, crispy tuna tacos, and Cracker Bay fried chicken. Tables inclined towards sharing are handsomely looked after, whether by the Bravo seafood platter, piled with sashimi, chilled prawns and calamari and improved considerably by a whole grilled crayfish, or by a 700g aged T-bone carved at the table, while a pizza named Spicy Bastard sits on the menu waiting for a grandchild to order it at volume. The children have a proper menu of their own, cheeseburgers and penne pomodoro among it, and for anyone whose afternoon ends back on the water, Bravo Go sends rotisserie chicken and sides off with departing boats, along with a bottle of Ayrburn wine for the journey.
For the milestones, a private dining room hosts birthdays, anniversaries and sprawling extended-family gatherings with all the warmth of a party at home and a professional kitchen doing every last dish. By golden hour, when the light turns the harbour to brass, the children reappear as though they never left, lured by sundaes of vanilla soft serve, Milo and pretzel, and the long family lunch finally earns its name.
