I had no idea that the concept of a “kid friendly” restaurant had real weight until I went with my cousin, his wife, and their five year old to Juniper and Ivy in San Diego. The parental anxieties while eating at a “nice” place were palpable.
With this new insight, I want to ask the board for suggestions of a restaurant with delicious food that would suitable to bring along my six month old nephew and his parents. Anywhere from WeHo to the SGV is cool. Just as long as the food is good. Thanks in advance.
I took my then 3 and 5 year olds to Juniper & Ivy. We sat on the outside porch at 5pm when the restaurant was pretty empty and brought some coloring books. They were perfectly fine and we found enough dishes for them to eat. If you were sitting inside then I could see the anxiety increasing. We’ve taken my kids to Mozza, Passionfish in Monterrey, Delfina in SF, bistros in Paris and a lots of other places. IMHO I think as long as the kids are fairly well behaved go when the restaurant first opens between 5pm-6pm and you bring some entertainment - coloring books, ipad, kindle, etc… you can dine out with kids at lots of good restaurants.
I think six month olds are even easier if you can time it within their nap schedule.
Fyi, 6 month old is probably easier to plan for than 5 year old in many ways. I would suggest thinking of a few places that you want to go to that are lively but not very loud and fairly spacious. Ask them if they have high chairs and if so they should be fine.
The biggest thing for us at that point was having room for the crap we needed to bring.
Eating out with a 6-MONTH old is vastly different than eating out with a 6-YEAR old.
If there is an infant, then the menu will only be of interest to the adults in the room. The focus will be on comfort/safety of seating (high chairs), what’s dangerous within arm’s length of the baby (knives, hot water), availability of napkins (clean-up in aisle 3!), diaper-friendly bathrooms (in case of code brown or emesis), space to stash the stroller/car seat, and pace of the meal so parents can exfil at a moment’s notice (naps are directly correlated with parental happiness).
I was at Providence this past week, and noticed new parents (with breastfeeding baby in tow), seated happily in the back corner. Yes, it’s Siberia, but hey, you’re still eating Chef Cimarusti’s fantastic cuisine. AND you’re paying so much there, that the staff will go to ridiculous lengths to make sure everyone has an enjoyable time.
So go to Providence. And get the signature live salt-baked Santa Barbara prawn, finished tableside. Your party will likely be seated in a quiet corner of the dining room, but the food will more than make up for it.
It’s unclear what the OP is asking for. Do you mean a restaurant that has a kid’s menu or things like mac and cheese? Or a restaurant that has entertainment to keep the kids busy?
Like @js76wisco, we’ve been taking our 4 year old dining with us since she was a couple of months old to all sorts of restaurants high and low and haven’t found too many barriers as long as she’s well behaved.
For restaurants that have “exciting things” to keep kids busy:
Golden Road brewery
Pitfire Pizza
Luggage Room, Le Grand Orange
The Counter
Hai Di Lao (they have goodies to keep kids busy and get the dancing noodles)
Monkey Bar (has outside patio right next to some stationary bicycle things and plenty of people watching)
Conveyor Belt sushi spots
If the kids aren’t picky, almost any restaurant would work. These are ones we’ve had success bringing our kid to:
Broken Spanish (there’s an outdoor light up display that you can take them to between courses)
Lost at Sea (the table closest to the front window gives you the most room if your kid wants to stand up for a bit or wonder outside)
Sugar Fish
Redbird (totally obnoxious for us to ask, but the bar also made a virgin aperitif for our kid)
Genwa
The only thing I’d watch out for is places that only offer omakase or prix fixe. Would you end up ordering a whole course for your kid? Would that be too much food? YMMV
While we take ours (4 yo) everywhere (if kids are allowed by law then they’re kid friendly, no mater what attitude we get) and recently took him to Kali it’s obviously not very fun to drop 2-300 while being constantly distracted and be taking care of the kid… not a fan of sticking a phone in his face very much.
That said anything that’s not very high end is fair game but especially loud places like Bludso’s, any pizza place like Desano, any burger place like Plan Check or Golden State, every single Thai, Korean, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese place. And breweries. Can’t get enough of breweries with the kid. Most let you bring food.
When Giselle Wellman was at Petrossian, she was extraordinarily kind to patrons with kids. I saw her come out and deliver special meals she would whip up off-menu for the kids. Not sure if the new chef is doing that now.
We don’t get out into the city much now…too lazy to hop on the freeways on the weekend, but tend to take our minions to more casual places. Animal, Mozza, and AOC were some of our favorites.
We’ve been taking our toddler to Holbox a lot lately, and while not a fancy sit-down joint, it certainly serves some delicious food. There’s a lot of open space to carry/stroll baby along while you wait for your food, tables with enough open space that you could park a stroller next to you, and the general acoustics of the Mercado space are such that if baby got a bit fussy, it wouldn’t be so noticeable as to bother other diners too much.
