Bistro Blu is a place that children can play, parents can shop and, above all, families can enjoy cuisine that can be classed as gourmet. [Photo by Dong Fangyu / China Daily]

Once it is safe to introduce salt to a baby's diet, there is another pasta dish of low salt and oil with a cute layout of fruit and vegetables and smiley potato pies. This fusilli pasta is very soft, deliberately cooked to excess so that it is not chewy, making it palatable to toddlers.

Older children have a choice of various sets of beef, pizza and sausages.

While children eat or have fun at the restaurant play area of swings, slides, and toys, parents can treat themselves with delightful treats as well, such as the authentic German delight Schweinshaxe (a sizable roasted pork knuckle).

The cracked skin is a delectable crust, and the meat inside butter soft, almost falling apart at the mere touch of a fork and knife. This dish takes time: once the marinated pork knuckle is put into the oven it is sprinkled with beer every 15 minutes over two hours, Van Doorn said. Only by sticking rigidly to that method, he said, can the skin be crisp and chewy and not stick to one's teeth. The fat under the skin is a revelation, too, delicious and grease free, and with the texture of bone marrow.

Also try balancing your palate with what it is paired with the pork knuckle - the sour sauerkraut (fermented cabbage), the German version of Chinese pickled cabbage suan cai.

We also tried risotto, wanting to test how Bistro Blu performs with this dish that is simple but notoriously difficult to get right. The porcini mushrooms risotto and seafood risotto met our high expectations, exquisitely mushy and slightly chewy.

The idea for sucha restaurant and a shop selling baby products was born with the joys and frustrations of becoming an international parent in China, Van Doorn said.