the_rck

Eating in restaurants will probably become easier in the future, even with more restrictions on what you eat. Four-year-olds generally have better restaurant manners than babies or toddlers. Most people who work in restaurants know this, and they smile at 4-year-olds and bring them crayons (even if they get grumpy when someone brings in a toddler). If I were you, I would look for restaurants specializing in relatively plain food, where the staff speaks good English and can accomodate requests. Steakhouses and seafood restaurants might work, though they're expensive. They cook food to order, so you can get it without spices (and you can get food other than beef at a steakhouse.) Diners are also likely to be accomodating. I realize the helpfulness of cooking food to order works against the problem of dealing with a child's attention span, but maybe you can bring a board game or something.