Dining Out With Children
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This weekend my sister, sister-in-law and I are planning a family brunch. Here was the proposed menu from the restaurant for the kids.
Kids Menu
Mac n Cheese
Chicken Fingers
French Toast Sticks
This is what drives me crazy about eating out with Birch.
The Kids Menu.
Here is typical fare for a kids menu:
Grilled cheese
Chicken fingers
Hamburger
Fries
Mac n Cheese
Pizza
This sounds like what we got at my high school cafeteria. And grade school for that matter. This is what America gives growing kids. And the restaurant world is no different. However you can find some restaurants that do offer healthy alternatives. But, for the most part, if you want something healthy for your kids, you are forced to order a regular adult entree at full price. We will do this sometimes and then bag it up for lunch the next day. It isn’t ideal, but it is an option.
The other problem with eating out is the wait between sitting down and getting your entree. If you don’t time it right (which we rarely do) your child ends up eating a lot of bread before the meal comes or exploding with tiredness or hunger. To avoid this, sometimes we order two appetizers (one to come at appetizer time) and the other at entree time. The other thing we do is to tell the waiter that we don’t want bread on the table.
One of the best ways to get good, small meals for your kids is to go to a tapas type of restaurant. Olea and The General Greene in Fort Greene are two good ones to try. The Heights Cafe will do half-orders for you
To find kid friendly restaurants and reviews of them, check out my blog listings here- (this is just the link for one area- choose your neighborhood on the left hand column of my blog to find more).
If you have any suggestions or reviews of kid friendly restaurants to share, please post them in the comments section of this post.
hooray for parents who shun the fast food crap and want “real food” for their kids. when my son was young Two Boots was all there was available that was really kid friendly. But we managed, and when we traveled, we exposed our son to dining. It’s been great experience. At 17, he took his girlfriend to dinner at a very nice place on Valentines day.He knew how to order, eat properly and tip. He even tried new food (the pre fixe menu featured oysters). Dining out is a learning experience and the food should also reflect that. Children should be exposed to all that restaurant dining can offer.
Oh, and The Farm on Adderly (on Cortelyou Rd) and Picket Fences (also on Cortelyou) both have great kids menus. It’s food you’d eat, but just in smaller portions.
I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve ordered from the kids menu for my 3-yr-old. We take her out so that she can enjoy the restaurant experience. Giving her chicken fingers and fries kind of defeats that.
Normally, we just give her some of whatever we’ve ordered. We ask for a smaller plate and she ends up eating something from everyone’s plate. It ensures that she’s getting “real” food while encouraging her to try new things.
I couldn’t agree more- not to mention the countless times we’ve ordered something from the kids menu and fries showed up on the plate and that’s all she ended up eating. I would love to find a place that offered kids salmon, kids pasta primavera- at least slightly healthier options.
I do like the idea of ordering tapas/appetizer’s right away. We’ve also started using menupages.com and scoping out the menus ahead of time- that way we can ensure there are things we can all enjoy.