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Chain restaurants and "Kids Eat Free" deals
"Kids Eat Free" deals may seem like an easy sell for many parents. Chain restaurants such as Denny's, TGI Friday's, Pasta Pomodoro, and Chevy's offer these specials, as do many local joints. Share your favorites and stories in the comments.
inetours.com
If you see high chairs, it must be Tuesday night.
If you are a foodie or locovore, there may be some snobbery that keeps you from trying a chain restaurant, free food or not. I'm guilty of that. When we'd walk around San Francisco, my husband used to point out how popular a chain restaurant was in the hopes of luring me there for a brunch, only to have me shoot down the idea every time. Recently, I decided to take the open minded approach since many of my friends have tried and enjoyed this type of restaurant many times with their offspring, and consider it a routine destination for eating together.
For restaurant owners, perhaps a "kid's eat free" deal means folks know it's a kid friendly spot. It could also be yet another savvy way of getting folks in the restaurant door. Taking kids out to eat for free presents the chance to get out of the house and eat at a discount with your kid(s). As with any meal out, it means zero clean up. Leaving dishes, worries, and crumbs at home make this sort of outing sound appealing.
Cipriano and I rode the 48 bus to the Pasta Pomodoro in Noe Valley last night to try the "Kids Eat Free" promotion. Note many Pasta Pomodoro locations offer this Tuesday night promo; the one in Laurel Village is not one of them. Read More 'Chain restaurants and "Kids Eat Free" deals' »
| February 04 2010 at 03:52 PM
Your favorite kid-friendly destination eatery
As my children get older -- 4 1/2 and 1 1/2 years old as of this writing -- our dining out options have been dwindling. The younger one wants his food right-freaking-now and the older one seems incapable of sitting still for more than three minutes. The only time I take both kids out to a restaurant is to meet my parents, usually at a midway point between my place and their home in northern Sonoma County. And it almost always goes badly from a behavior point of view.
They both fell asleep the second we got back in the car.
Like I said, the options are dwindling. To enjoy a meal with my kids, I need to special-order a restaurant that serves food quickly, with stuff kids like. Outdoor picnic benches are a plus, and pretty much everyone who works there and eats there has to like kids. It has to have a football field-sized grass area where the kids can run around -- but with fences so the toddler doesn't sprint into traffic. Oh yes, and it has to be geographically situated so it's less than an hour's drive from both Healdsburg and Oakland.
It turns out such a place exists. And they give out free balloons.
Taylor's Refresher in St. Helena didn't make last year's family-friendly eateries list, mostly because it isn't a real restaurant. It's also off my radar, for reasons of habit more than anything else. I was used to meeting my parents along Highway 101 in Corte Madera or Petaluma.
The recent work on the Bay Bridge -- and a fear that the Richmond Bridge would be packed a few weeks ago -- forced us to think outside our comfort zone. After considering the town square in Sonoma, I suggested Taylor's Refresher. I'm a fan of their place in the Ferry Building in San Francisco, and vaguely remember going to the St. Helena place with my wife before we had kids. Read More 'Your favorite kid-friendly destination eatery' »
| September 21 2009 at 11:37 AM
Fix the strap! (and other high chair advice)
Learning to use a high chair at a kid-friendly restaurant with a baby is one of a zillion things you learn how to do with a kid. I realized how important the high chair can be after a series of visits to numerous Bay Area eating spots. The high chair can be a great tool to keeping you and your baby happy. This of course depends on how your wee one is feeling that day. On one outing, a helpful and kind dining companion saw me struggle with the high chair. She stood behind my son Cip, swooped her arm under him, and bent his legs so he'd fit safely into the chair. I joked something like, "So that's how you do it!" to her. Before I had seen her do that, I would try and get Cip into a restaurant high chair one leg at a time, from the front or side, which never quite seemed right.
amazon.com
They're never this clean ...
What are your survival tactics when setting up restaurant seating with a toddler: Bring a friend or other helper? Make sure the kid is asleep (I'm half-way kidding)? Be a return customer to your tried-and-true favorite places? Please serve us any wise, delicious and funny tips in the comments.
When I was a restaurant floor manager, I would double check to see if a high chair was clean before setting it up for guests. If it was gunky or dirty at all, I would take the time to clean it up. The first time my boss saw me do this, he paused. When we were away from customers, he said, "Thank you for doing that." Offering a clean, usable high chair wins major points with parents and caregivers. I'm (now) more likely to return to such a kid-friendly place and tip well when I know the seating for my son is a sure thing. Read More 'Fix the strap! (and other high chair advice)' »
| July 15 2008 at 02:03 PM
More kid-friendly Bay Area dining spots
Eric Luse/Chronicle
Darla keeps the orders straight at Darla's in San Francisco.
We recently had a nice discussion on good kid-friendly places for family dining, and Tara Duggan wrote a great piece on a similar subject last week. But to be honest, we would only take our kid out for a meal like that once or twice per year. Our most valuable restaurants are the local ones that we can rely on at least once per month -- with reasonable prices, a kid-friendly vibe and food that we like too.
I still stand by the East Bay places that I mentioned last year (although I haven't been to House of Curries in a while). Below are a few more kid-friendly additions. Just having a kid menu and a few crayons at the table isn't enough to make our list -- the restaurant has to be locally owned, have good food and make the extra effort to cater to kids.
Add your own favorites in the comments -- especially if you live in the South Bay and North Bay, which don't get enough love on our lists. Read More 'More kid-friendly Bay Area dining spots' »
| April 02 2008 at 08:02 AM
Family style dining in the Bay Area
No corkage fee for the sippy cups.
Finding a kid-friendly place to eat in the Bay Area is easy. Here are a few East Bay favorites from a previous post.
A much bigger challenge, I think, is finding a kid-friendly place to eat that's actually kind of nice. Something with cloth napkins and really good food, where the servers encourage everyone to sit for a while, but nobody minds kids running around. The kind of place where the meal is memorable, there are menu options for the really young and really old, and preferably a nice shopping area to walk off the food baby once everyone is done.
This is a tall order, I know. We've eaten regularly at just two such places like that during the 25 total years I've lived in the Bay Area -- one of them is closed and the other is nearly an hour and a half drive from our Oakland home.
Here are my choices. Please add your own suggestions to the comments ...
Read More 'Family style dining in the Bay Area' »| March 11 2008 at 10:04 AM
Great moments in kid-friendly dining: Fresh Choice high chair
The first time I went to a Fresh Choice, it was under duress. This was back in 2000, and I was driving up to Oregon with photographer Kim Komenich to write an article about Bigfoot. As we pulled into a Santa Rosa retail plaza off the freeway, and he described the wonders of the restaurant's salad bar and buffet, all I could think was "How is this not like the cafeteria I spent five years avoiding in college?" But Kim had a Pulitzer, and I was the new guy. So I shut up and grabbed a tray.
Notice the tray-holder on the back.
About 20 minutes later, I was the unofficial spokesman and head pimp for the Fresh Choice Fan Club of the Bay Area. It wasn't so much that the food was great, it was the volume of food that one could consume without feeling totally sick. Because the meal was centered around salad, you could be a glutton, and still feel kind of like you ate a healthy meal. Genius!
Fresh Choice and I grew apart over the years, mostly because there isn't one anywhere near where my wife and I live. I had all but forgotten about the place, until I wrote the 95-cent Meatball post in The Poop, and someone wrote in the comments about the Diaper Deck Tot & Toddler Chair -- a combination high chair/stroller/tray holder that allows babies and toddlers to graze along with their parents.
We investigated two weekends ago, during a trip to the Sunvalley Shopping Center in Pleasant Hill. Read More 'Great moments in kid-friendly dining: Fresh Choice high chair' »
| November 21 2007 at 06:11 AM
Great moments in kid-friendly dining: The 95-cent meatball
Any restaurant can throw a few crayons on the table, charge $6.95 for chicken strips and fries, and then declare itself kid-friendly. And God bless each and every one. Sometimes those crayons are the only thing stopping my son from turning into this.
ikea.com.sg
Ikea meatballs: no assembly required.
But when you see a child-size item for less than $2 at a restaurant, you know the people calling the shots have kids themselves. We went to Amici's a few weeks ago and were surprised to find a 95-cent meatball, which along with the free bread and part of our salad was enough to satisfy our toddler.
While several of us have written various spins on the "best kid-friendly restaurants in the Bay Area" theme, places that offer cheap food on their children's menus get their own special Hall of Fame.
Here are a few favorites:
Amici's Pizzeria: I always feel a pang of journalistic failure when promoting chain restaurants -- even local ones -- on this blog. But the people at Amici's clearly know how to run a business. The food is decent, and every time we go there the excellent service and kid-friendly touches are always noticeable. Multiple locations
Read More 'Great moments in kid-friendly dining: The 95-cent meatball' »| August 06 2007 at 05:09 PM
Best kid-friendly adult restaurant in San Francisco
Long before she could say mama or dada or point to necessities like milk and ATMs, my daughter could find a disco ball in a crowded room.
"Where's the disco ball?" I'd ask her, and she would immediately look to the ceiling, point it out and begin to dance. She was like John Travolta -- an earlier, less-crazy John Travolta. With tights.
That bouncer is wicked mean, so be warned!
A few months later, when she started to do the "sprinkler" and the "hustle," I began to worry -- because I knew we were eating out at a certain San Francisco restaurant way too much. Still, it's not often you find an adult restaurant and bar that just happens to also be the most kid-friendly restaurant in the city.
Nick's Crispy Tacos in Russian Hill is not your typical taqueria. It's housed in Harry Denton's Rouge lounge, which is bedecked with red velvet booths, glistening chandeliers and, of course, disco balls. The entire place is eye candy for kids, with darkened, cracked mirrors and dance lights and crystal, phallic, er, thingies hanging from the ceiling to keep them enthralled. A particularly nice touch -- and I've always been curious about whether these come down when the taqueria closes and the lounge stays open on weekends -- is the Sesame Street and Winnie the Pooh pinatas hanging from the crystal chandeliers. Read More 'Best kid-friendly adult restaurant in San Francisco' »
| July 20 2007 at 10:15 AM
Kids in restaurants: Respect your server
Houlihans isn't the nicest restaurant in the world, but it's definitely the nicest restaurant at the Sun Valley Mall in Concord.
media.komotv.com
She won't be smiling for long.
It's certainly the only one with cloth napkins, and the dark wood paneling is five times classier than the crap on the walls of Red Robin or Fresh Choice. In a mall with the largest amount of Raiders jerseys per capita in the Bay Area, the servers go through the effort to wear neckties -- even if they are of the Debra Winger-in-"Legal Eagles" Dianne Feinstein variety.
Now that we've established that this restaurant is "kind of nice" by middle class standards, I hope you can better understand my desire to neuter the couple who sat down in the booth across from us this weekend, toting bags of Burger King into the restaurant for their kid.
This happened despite the fact that the Houlihans has an extensive and reasonable childrens menu, with prices only slightly higher than whatever Bad Parent 1 and Bad Parent 2 had paid for their 5-year-old's BK Kids Meal. As the rest of the family ordered, both parents barked orders and acted rudely toward the server -- the same nice waitress who had been so friendly and accommodating to our 2-year-old. And while I didn't see how much they tipped, they did leave a pile of Burger King trash on the table.
The reasons this pisses me off are twofold: Read More 'Kids in restaurants: Respect your server' »
| July 09 2007 at 05:05 PM
Kid-friendly dining spots: East Bay edition
While our social life has changed only slightly since having a child, our eating habits have experienced a complete reboot. My wife and I venture out to eat just as much as we used to before the baby came, but the places we go are completely different.
Chronicle/Katy Raddatz 2004
Chicken ... Waffles ... Trains ... what's not to like about Home of Chicken and Waffles?
Kid-friendly restaurants have their own vibe. We're willing to be less adventurous and give up atmosphere in favor of patient staff, high chairs with working straps and peace of mind knowing there will be other families with small children -- and I won't be single-handedly ruining the evening of the people next to me.
Here are six East Bay restaurants kid-friendly enough to get our return business -- the food doesn't suck, the service is good and the rooms are spacious enough to accomodate strollers, etc. All of the following have kid menus, except House of Curries.
This list is probably 50 restaurants short of being exhaustive -- please post your own suggestions in the comments section. (Aidin has already done a list of kid-friendly outdoor spots in San Francisco.)
Home of Chicken and Waffles: 444 Embarcadero West, Oakland
This 2004 addition to Jack London Square is by far my favorite place to eat when the boy and I are spending a weekday together. The menu is similar to Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles in L.A., except the atmosphere is much more kid-friendly -- with a lot of room and big windows that look out on well-traveled train tracks. (Bonus entertainment value!) And the friendly wait staff all seem to love kids. Read More 'Kid-friendly dining spots: East Bay edition' »
| January 04 2007 at 06:01 AM
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