To celebrate the birthday of a close friend of ours, Will, his wife, Christine, planned a chill birthday dinner on the beach – at Manhattan Beach. We both have kids that would rather be running around than sitting in a restaurant. So, a dinner on the beach was a brilliant idea! And also a very easy to execute family birthday outing with kids.
It’s the small details that make a difference. Christine told us to meet her at Manhattan Beach at 5:00 and that she would have dinner, drinks and blankets. We just needed to bring chairs and ourselves. We arrived to the most perfect dinner set-up. Christine brought a small wooden table she had in her garage (a camping table from REI like this would also work well) and covered it with a tablecloth. She ordered dinner from Manhattan Beach Post and had Task Rabbit bring it to the beach. Genius. She had a bottle of wine in a 25 oz. Corkcicle water bottle to kept it cold and discrete (btw Corkcicle has some gorgeous bottles right now in collaboration with Rifle Paper Co.). She dessert easy with homemade rice crispy treats for dessert (aka the kids dinner). She finished the set-up with nice quality disposable silverware, napkins cups.
We love Manhattan Beach Post, but we’ve never had takeout from there. Although we ate the food probably 45 minutes after it was delivered, it was still pretty delicious. The highlights for me were the bacon cheddar buttermilk biscuits and the quinoa and kale salad (the salad dressing is legit). The bacon cheddar biscuits and honey butter that they are famous for never get old to me. Never. The pretzel and spicy-sweet honey mustard was delicious and perfect for a crowd. We also had the steak and broccolini, meatballs and polenta, and ricotta and spinach tortellini. None of them blew my socks off, but they were all tasty and I would order all of them again (and they also might be tastier hot).
The kids had a ball. They barely wanted to stop playing to eat. They played with sand toys, tossed a ball, ran in circles, wrestled and danced around. The moment they got in the car they were knocked out. I told Lateef as we were leaving that I wanted to have a family dinner on the beach for my birthday next year. We went to a family birthday dinner with the kids the week before and it was a disaster. This was a perfect chill birthday celebration with friends and family.
Tip: It gets quite cold at California beaches as soon as the sun goes down at California beaches, and is usually often windy. So, bring jackets and blankets or you will be freezing! The kids didn’t seem cold at all because they were running around until the moment we left, but us adults would have been cold if we weren’t prepared.
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