When dining-out rules include sitting on the floor and eating with your fingers, a meal out with kids in tow can be more about visiting and less about enforcing proper table manners.

Although I’ve had nephews and nieces for well over a decade, closer to two, actually (shocking, when I do the math), I am a relative newcomer to parenthood, and as such have seen some modifications to my social life over the past two and a half years. I’m sure I have been to more little-kid birthday parties than to actual sit-down restaurants.

Dwayne and Alberta Ennest, Calgary’s new generation Mom and Pop, have succeeded in redefining diner food for the new millennium, serving it up in the prettiest diner in the city. Diner Deluxe on Edmonton Trail is a blend of ‘50s pastels and space-age tones. Customers on vinyl chairs are seated around Arborite kitchen tables under lamps that look like something out of the Jetsons.