Does the thought of eating out with your kids in a restaurant bring up so much stress and too many ‘what ifs?’ that you just decide it’s not worth the hassle? It’s understandable — eating out with kids, especially when hunger hits suddenly and they need to eat now, can be stressful.
Taking a picnic to wolf down on a soggy park bench or huddled in the car, or even rushing home in time for meals, might be your go-to when planning days out with the family, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Kid-friendly restaurants do exist. What’s more, they likely exist closer to home than you’d expect. But finding one that suits your needs does take some considered research and planning.
Read on to find out our six top tips to help you find the best kid-friendly restaurants near you, including important criteria to look for to enhance your family-dining experience.
1. Look for restaurants that are set up for kids
If you have kids — and especially if they’re toddlers or babies — you’ll know that eating out becomes a whole lot simpler when you have a few bases covered. But what exactly do you need to look for in a restaurant when you eat out with kids? More than you might realise! But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with a checklist of family-friendly criteria.
Some of these may seem obvious, but here are some questions to consider when looking for the best kid-friendly restaurants near you:
- Does the restaurant market itself as kid-friendly?
- Does the restaurant have space for kids to move around?
- Does the restaurant have a kids play area or activities, like drawing, toys or books?
- Does the restaurant provide free nappies and wipes in the toilets?
- Does the restaurant have a kids menu and/or do kids eat for free?
- Does the restaurant have high chairs and/or kid-friendly seating?
- Does the restaurant allow you to heat up baby food in a microwave?
- Does the restaurant have accessible toilets (for prams) and baby change facilities?
- Does the restaurant have cutlery/plates/bowls/cups for toddlers/babies?
- Does the restaurant display a breastfeeding-friendly sticker?
This is something you might be able to gather from checking out the vibe of a restaurant you have in mind on social media, or — if you’re walking past a place you like the look of on a day out — you can always ask the waiting staff before requesting a table.
Now that you have a clearer idea of what you’re looking for in a place to eat out with your little ones, read on to find out how to check some of the criteria above to land on the best kid-friendly restaurants in your area.
2. Do a smart online search for family-friendly restaurants in your area
Whenever you’re looking for somewhere to eat, one of your first ports of call will probably be the internet (that is, after asking other parent friends/acquaintances, who can be a great source of information). You’ll likely find yourself typing in something like ‘best kid-friendly restaurants near me’ and getting a tonne of — hopefully promising — results to sift through. But without any strategy to your search, you may end up going round in circles and getting overwhelmed at the sheer number of restaurants that appear to be family-friendly but may not be — you just can’t tell! Here’s how to get the most out of your internet searches.
Check search engines and reviews
First, to get inspiration, you can search a city/town/area on Trip Advisor and select ‘good for: families with children’ in your search criteria. Here is an example of the results you might get for Manchester.
After this, to see what other people, especially parents, have to say about their dining experience (and to see pictures of the food and the set-up to assess its kid-friendliness for yourself), you can always look at Google Reviews of a restaurant, which will appear when you search the name of a specific restaurant in Google.
Check local parent blogs
An even better way of finding a place to eat for the whole family, however, is to check what local parent bloggers have to say about kid-friendly restaurants in your area. They tend to go into detail about the pros and cons of the restaurant and may well include plenty of photos for you to see the vibe of the place before deciding to go. You can also check their social media accounts to get a better feel for their experience at the restaurant.
3. Look for restaurants with kids menus
Once you’ve done a smart internet search for potential restaurants, you’ll want to do some digging to see if your short-listed eateries are the real deal. But how can you be sure that a restaurant is kid-friendly, at least in terms of the food on offer? Of course, you can go for sure-fire options, like Italian restaurants or burger joints, but you don’t have to limit your choices to these.
One reliable tactic is to check if the restaurant has a kids’ menu. Chain restaurant TGI Friday’s, for example, has a small but effective kids menu to satisfy even the fussiest of eaters.
For something a little more adventurous, Wahaca has a fun and well-rounded kids’ menu that hits all the kid-friendly food bases like chicken and cheese, but with a Mexican twist. Kids can choose to build their own tacos selecting the ingredients they want, which avoids any meltdowns when their plate comes with something on it they don’t like this week — yep, their tastes seem to change weekly at times!
4. Look for restaurants where kids eat free
Perhaps an even better indicator that a restaurant is kid-friendly is when a restaurant has a kids-eat-free policy. Yes, these do exist! For example, kids eat free at Brewers Fayre — for every adult that buys an all-you-can-eat breakfast, up to two kids under 16 get to eat for free.
And Gordon Ramsey’s restaurants have a generous kids-eat-free deal, where kids get a main meal — with super kid-friendly options like bangers and mash or macaroni and cheese — completely for free.
To help you in your search for a kid-friendly restaurant where you won’t have to fork out much or at all for your kids to eat, here’s a handy list of kid-friendly restaurants where kids eat free.
5. Look for restaurants with a designated play area
It’s all good and well if a restaurant offers a kids’ menu or even a kids-eat-free deal, but that’s not much use if the restaurant itself is not set up for kids to be, well, kids. Older kids may well be able to sit at a table for the duration of a (sometimes multiple-course) meal, but this is very rarely the case for younger kids. They need space. They need to make noise. They need activities.
A great idea is to check out the restaurant options with designated indoor play or outdoor play areas attached to them or close by. For example, Loch Leven Larder in Fife offers a variety of family-friendly indoor and outdoor dining areas with a play park a stone’s throw away from the outdoor seating.
If you fancy a relaxed dining experience offered in a family-friendly pub, you can even find pubs that come with enclosed play areas. The Black Horse in Beamish is a great example, and even offers an afternoon tea platter that’s just for kids!
And when you fancy a casual location for a good old catch-up with other parent friends and their little ones, search for indoor play cafes, like Skyboat Cafe in Bristol. In this kind of cafe, you pay a small fee for entry to the play space and then are able to order from the cafe menu and sit in the play area or in a separate cafe.
6. Look for breastfeeding-friendly restaurants
For breastfeeding parents, knowing that a restaurant will be welcoming when you settle down to feed your little one is an important consideration. Thankfully, in 2015, breast-pump company Medela launched its breastfeeding-friendly stickers, which restaurants can place in their windows to let breastfeeding parents know they are welcome to breastfeed in their establishment. To help you in your search for a restaurant, Medela also shares some of the UK’s most breastfeeding-friendly hotspots.
Pizza and pasta fans will be happy to note that the popular Italian food chain Pizza Express, with restaurants all over the UK, has been assessed by Medela as particularly breastfeeding-friendly. Plus, they have a kids menu and pizza-making parties on offer too, so it’s a win-win situation if you’re looking for somewhere to eat with a baby and other kids in tow.
Hopefully, with these six ideas and tips in your back pocket about how to find the best kid-friendly restaurants near you, your next eating out adventure will be fun and memorable for all the family.