When Bay Area restaurateur You You Xue witnessed a customer changing their child’s diaper atop a communal booth in the middle of the dining room, he felt he had to put a stop to the madness.
At the time of the incident, about a year ago, Xue had already been thinking that customer behavior at his restaurant Chez Xue in Foster City had deteriorated, with kids “fooling around and basically trashing the place” and parents failing to put a stop to it, he said.
The San Mateo County restaurant has used a digital menu since it opened in 2021 that customers can access with a QR code. And so it was easy, Xue said, to affix a notice at the top of the menu: “Please control your children.”
“Chez Xue is a family-friendly restaurant. However, we are not a playground. Please ensure children REMAIN SEATED at all times and respectful of fellow guests and the dining environment. Running around, shouting, making noise with utensils, etc. WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!” it reads.
It notes that guests who do not respect the policy may be asked to leave and that the restaurant will “hold parents financially liable for all damage caused by their children to restaurant property.”
The policy has been in place for about a year, Xue said, but it went viral last week and garnered headlines after another local business owner posted screenshots of the restaurant’s policy on X.
To ensure parents know the restaurant means business, the warning also cites “recent damages.”
Examples include an April 2025 incident during which a child picked up and then smashed a credit card machine on the ground, the restaurant said, leading to a $327.03 bill for the parents. In a December incident, according to Chez Xue, a child carved pictures into the surface of the table with a utensil, costing the parents $109.38. A shattered teacup bumped by a child playing in a booth seat resulted in a charge to the parent of $5.47.
Xue said the restaurant seeks to accommodate families. It’s not a fussy place, with bright lighting and no candles, an environment in which toddlers could, in theory, careen around. But he said he feels “some people take advantage of that.”
“We are a casual restaurant,” Xue said, “but we’re not a Chuck E. Cheese.”
Xue, who also owns a cozy Michelin-recognized restaurant serving Hunan-style Chinese eats in Millbrae called Wonderful, does not shy away from the spotlight. Several years ago, he railed against so-called “junk fees” on bills, suing dozens of San Francisco businesses in 2024 over hidden surcharges. In another lawsuit, he claimed an arcade rigged its claw machines against players, alleging it functioned as “a casino for children.” That year, he also ran for a seat on Millbrae City Council but lost.
Xue puts the blame for children’s behavior squarely on the parents but says he takes no pleasure in playing enforcer. “I don’t want to be put in that position,” Xue said. “It’s so awkward to go up to a parent and say something so obvious.”
Rowdy children represent yet another challenge for restaurants like his that have struggled through the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic and, more recently, skyrocketing prices for beef, cooking oil and other goods, Xue said. He sees Chez Xue as his own home, he says. So he takes the policy seriously.
“It’s survived against all odds,” he said, “and that’s why I hope people will show some more respect.”
The general reaction to the policy has been overwhelmingly positive, Xue said, aside from some remarks on social media that charging for a smashed teacup was a petty move. The restaurant has even received a smattering of new customers as well as phone calls voicing support.
“We said the quiet part out loud,” Xue said. “We said something that a lot of people are thinking, and we’ve come forward and spoken on behalf of other restaurants and on behalf of customers who have had a meal ruined by a loud child.”
Since Xue instituted the official policy, and particularly since he made the notice more prominent at the top of the menu, the number of incidents “has fallen considerably to basically zero,” he said.
The 28-year-old, whose legal name is Alexander Xue and who doesn’t have kids of his own, said he had seen some parenting become more lax, with rowdiness that his own parents wouldn’t have tolerated from him growing up.
At the end of the day, however, he only concerns himself with what happens within the four walls of his business and concedes that “the vast majority of parents are very responsible.”
Still, now and then, a few “ruin the experience for everyone else.”