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Published on September 22, 2007

 If you find yourself and your family at loose ends on a Sunday, you may want to check out the Cascade Coffee Shop at the Amari Atrium. For one day each week, the hotel opens up its "Little Chef's Brunch Club", a laid-back way for kids big and small to enjoy themselves while tucking into the fine food on offer at the buffet. The best news yet: there's not a video game in sight.

Instead, executive chef Hans Peter Aschwanden has organised an appealing range of activities for children between four and 12 - clay-pot painting, cake decoration, pasta-jewellery painting and origami. An expert in the ancient Thai art of sugar spinning is on hand to spin out any flower or animal requested by a kid (or even an adult). He'll show you how it's done, and you can even try your hand at it - the secret's in his sugar-syrup recipe.

The whole idea is to let children follow their own interests. If they're interested in cooking, a chef is on hand to teach them how to make a dish. If they're interested in fingernail painting, a staff member shows them how to decorate their cuticles properly. And if they simply want to run around, everyone is geared to dodging little bodies hurtling in all directions.

Around the restaurant, different stations have been set up to provide kids' favourite foods, from spaghetti to noodle soup to popcorn.

Each Sunday, a different chef is on hand to offer a cooking class along with the proper table manners. Any kid who attends the class for six Sundays with six different menus receives a certificate, a chef's jacket, a hat and an apron.

In the food department, adults are not ignored. While the buffet is not massive, it spans the range of Western, Japanese, Indian and Thai dishes. Foie gras with risotto has its own special station, as does the fresh seafood. It's impossible to stick to just the salad bar - the aromas of the other dishes will bust any diet.

The dessert table, with its cakes, cookies and puddings, attracts both big and little kids alike.

In addition, the tariff for this Sunday brunch is very "family friendly". Parents pay Bt824 and kids under 12 are free (limited to two kids per family).

Bring friends. Bring children. The atmosphere is sociable and relaxed, the perfect venue for a lazy Sunday.

Laurie Rosenthal

 The Nation