Birthday Games That Can Be Played in a Restaurant

Throwing a birthday party in a restaurant means not having to worry about food or seating arrangements. Birthday parties in restaurants are suitable for adults and older children alike. To make the party even more special, consider organizing some games for the guests to play while waiting for their food.

Plan a trivia game for your guests, choosing questions about different topics. Subjects might include music, film, television, history, popular culture or politics. Plan questions around your guests' interests. Think of at least 20 questions, and hand out sheets of paper and pens and have your guests write down their answers for each question. When you have read all the questions, have guests swap answer sheets with one another and read out the answers. Hand out small prizes for the guests with the most correct answers.

Make bingo cards using words instead of numbers. Choose words that relate to birthdays, or the birthday boy or girl. Take as many pieces of legal-size paper as there are guests, and divide each piece of paper into at least nine squares. Write a birthday-related word in each square, making sure that no piece of paper has the same set of words as another. On smaller pieces of paper, write each word once. Fold the smaller pieces of paper, place them in a hat and mix them up. Pick one piece of paper at a time and read aloud the word written on the paper. Each guest should cross that word off his bingo card. The winner is the guest to cross off all her words first.

This is a good game for smaller groups at a restaurant. Start by saying, for example, "I went to a party and I brought a basket of muffins." The person next to you should repeat what you said, and add something of his own, for example, "I went to a party and I brought a basket of muffins and a stuffed animal." Go around the table, having each guest add an item and repeating what all the previous guests have said. Keep going until someone forgets an item.

Arrive at the restaurant first and place a note card with a strange phrase written on it under each bread plate. Examples might include "I am a space cowboy" or "Have you tried the ostrich eggs?" Have guests read their card at the beginning of the meal, and instruct them to try to use their phrase as naturally as possible during dinner. The loser is the last guest to use her phrase in conversation.