Soup Stock recently started offering free food for babies, so it’s time for one of the SoraBabies to try it out!

Soup Stock Tokyo, a chain of casual soup restaurants with branches across Japan, recently announced that it would start offering free meals for babies. The program started last week, and our Japanese-language reporter Yuichiro Wasai decided a taste test was in order.

But of course, it doesn’t matter what Yuichiro thinks about the taste of Soup Stock’s free for-baby soup, but what little tykes themselves do. Luckily, Yuichiro is one of the doting daddies on the SoraNews24 team, and so helping him out with today’s article is his baby daughter.

According to the Soup Stock website, the free meals are for “kids approximately 9 to 11 months old.” At 1 year and 2 months, Yuichiro’s daughter is a little older, but he figured she could still slide in thanks to the “approximately” part of the guidelines, especially since she looks to be about the same age as the baby shown in Soup Stock’s promotional photo for the program.

The exact type of soup in the free baby meal will change periodically, but on the day of Yuichiro’s daddy-daughter lunch, they were offering Chicken and Sweet Potato Ojiya (ojiya being a kind of Japanese rice porridge).

Though Yuichiro himself makes a living as a writer, his daughter’s vocabulary is still pretty limited, on account of her tender age, so she does a lot of her communicating through gestures. For example, instead of saying “Itadakimasu,” the customary expression of gratitude said at the start of meals in Japan, she clasps her hands together in front of her.

With that taken care of, it was time for the taste test.

Leaning forward in her stroller, Yuichiro’s daughter took a spoonful of soup. After swallowing, she put a hand to the side of face, with her fingertips near her ear and her palm on her chubby cheek.

According to Daddy Yuichiro, this is a pose she strikes from time to time, and the meaning always is…

“Delicious!”

Sure enough, as soon as Yuichiro had another spoonful ready, she happily leaned forward for more.

That pattern repeated itself over and over until Yuichiro’s daughter had eaten the entire cup of soup. As a matter of fact, she liked it so much that even after the soup was all gone, she kept clinging to the cup…

…and got fussy when Yuichiro tried to take it away from her.

So Soup Stock’s free baby meal was a hit in Yuichiro’s and his daughters eyes. If you’d like one for your child, simply ask the staff “Rinyushoku wa onegai dekimasu ka?” (“Can I have a baby meal?”) when ordering your own for-adult menu items.

Aside from his daughter’s enjoyment of the soup and the economic benefit of not having to pay for it, there’s something else that made Yuichiro smile in all this. While Soup Stock Tokyo is a big chain, their individual restaurants aren’t all that big. They usually have the atmosphere of a relaxed, stylish cafe too, and between that and the close proximity to other diners, Yuichiro wasn’t sure if they really welcomed young children or not. The free baby meal program, though, is a sign that they definitely do, and now Yuichiro, plus any other parents who were unsure, can add Soup Stock to the list of candidate restaurants for a family meal out.

Related: Soup Stock location list
Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]