When Bay Area retailer You You Xue saw a customer changing her baby’s diaper on a booth in the middle of the dining room, she felt she had to put a stop to the madness.
At the time of the incident, about a year ago, Xue was already thinking that customer behavior at his Chez Xue restaurant in Foster City had gotten out of hand, with kids “tricking each other and basically trashing the place” and parents failing to stop it, he said.
The San Mateo County restaurant has used a digital menu since opening in 2021 that customers can access with a QR code. And so it was easy, Xue said, to stick 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 that children ALWAYS SIT DOWN at all times and are respectful of their fellow guests and the restaurant. Running, shouting, making noise with dishes, etc. WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!” it is learning.
It notes that guests who do not respect the policy may be asked to leave and that the restaurant will “hold parents financially responsible for all damages caused by their children at the restaurant.”
The policy has been in effect for about a year, Xue said, but it took effect last week and made headlines after a local business owner posted screenshots of the restaurant’s policy to X.
To make sure parents know the restaurant means business, the warning also mentions “recent damage.”
Examples include an incident in April 2025 where a child picked up and smashed a credit card machine on the floor, the restaurant said, resulting in a $327.03 bill to parents. In the December incident, according to Chez Xue, the child carved pictures on the table with a bowl, which cost the parents $109.38. A broken tea cup knocked over by a child playing in a chair resulted in a parent being charged $5.47.
Xue said the restaurant aims to accommodate families. It is not a crowded place, with bright light and no candles, a place where toddlers can take care of themselves. But he said he feels “some people are using that.”
“We’re a casual restaurant,” Xue said, “but we’re not Chuck E. Cheese.”
Xue, who also owns a Michelin-starred cozy Hunan-style Chinese restaurant in Millbrae called Wonderful, doesn’t shy away from the limelight. Several years ago, he railed against so-called “junk fees” in debt, suing dozens of San Francisco businesses in 2024 for hidden extra costs. In another case, he said that the sports stadium robbed its players of gambling machines, saying that it was operating as a “casino for children.” That year, he ran again for a seat on the Millbrae City Council but was unsuccessful.
Xue blames the parents for the way the children behave but says she does not enjoy playing hard. “I don’t want to be put in that position,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt to go to a parent and say something obvious.”
Rowdy kids represent another challenge for restaurants like his that have struggled with the COVID-19 pandemic and, more recently, rising prices for beef, cooking oil and other goods, Xue said. He says he sees Chez Xue as his home. So he takes politics seriously.
He said: “It survived all the difficult situations, that’s why I hope people will show more respect.”
The general reaction to the policy has been overwhelmingly positive, Xue said, despite some comments on social media that charging for a broken cup of tea was trivial. The restaurant has even received a lot of new customers as well as phone calls.
“We spoke loudly and silently,” Xue said. “We said what many people think, we came out and spoke on behalf of other restaurants and customers who were destroyed by a noisy child.”
Since Xue established the official policy, and especially since he made the notice prominently displayed on the menu, the number of incidents “has dropped to zero,” he said.
This 28-year-old boy, whose legal name is Alexander Xue and who has no children of his own, said that he has seen other parents being lax and noisy that his parents would not tolerate when he was growing up.
However, at the end of the day, he is only concerned with what happens within the four walls of his business and admits that “most parents have a lot of responsibility.”
Nevertheless, from time to time, a few “spoil the experience of everyone else.”
