Adam Platt: Family-Friendly Picks

I would not say I live in a family of foodies. My wife was raised in a picky Chicago household that lived on Pepsi and junk food. Seafood never darkened their door, salad was something the French ate. I was raised in a family of opinionated, traveled, food-preoccupied people. Our DNA comingled and produced a daughter that will eat every fruit God has created, but no vegetables (OK, ketchup). She demands of every restaurant, no matter how upscale, that it prepare corn dogs. Her last meal will be at Chili’s. My skeletal son veers between bouts of culinary ambition—gumbo, peel-and-eat shrimp, caesar salad—and days when the only thing he can work up a taste for is candy. (His last meal will be Halloween.) He is tiring of $8 multicourse kids' menus and now defaults to “do they have a filet?” (Do you have forty bucks?) Eating out can be a challenge with this lot. Still, we’ve found a number of restaurants where we all leave happy (even if that result hinges on an operable gumball machine at the door). If we can, trust me, you and your kids can too.

Campiello is the most upscale restaurant on this list, but it’s one of the few food-focused restaurants in town that are gladly and willingly able to adapt its menu staples into simple food that kids will eat. Pizza, pasta, killer calamari, simple hanger steak, or salmon. The short ribs remain an iconic dish that adventurous kids and all adults will enjoy. The cooking is careful, the food refined but robust, and there are no sinkholes on the menu. The pre-6 p.m. prix fixe multicourse special is the bargain of the century. Campiello is plenty loud, so voluble kids are no problem, but it’s still a gracious restaurant and may be more than you want to take on if your kids are in a particularly wild phase.

We are regulars at The Cheesecake Factory, which makes my friends and colleagues cringe. But that’s snobbery, plain and simple. The restaurant uniformly shows up in most of Zagat’s guides as a top-forty selection, and that’s because of the breadth of its menu (something for everyone) and scratch cooking, from salad dressings to sauces to soups. We’ve been taught to avoid restaurants that try to be all things to all people, but TCF carries it off. It’s not the best Mexican restaurant in town, or even in the top five, but its spicy chicken tacos are generous and tasty and your date can have pizza. It’s also one of the few restaurants in town that serves skirt steak, which I grew up eating and is one of the most flavorful value-oriented cuts around. Tell me you’ve had better spicy, crispy chicken or grilled eggplant sandwich than TCF’s. Salads are sublime, and everyone loves the avocado egg rolls with cilantro sauce. There’s a bunch of off-menu dishes and drinks sized for kids, not to mention a complimentary fruit and bread plate for babies and the impatient set.

Good Day Café cranks it out, in the tradition of short-order restaurants, and has quick service and massive turnover typical of the genre. The core of its breakfast/lunch menu is food from the Original Pancake House franchise—huge apple pancakes, soufflé omelets, thick-cut bacon, whipped butter. But the offerings here are broader, with steel-cut oatmeal, huckleberry muffins, beignets, huevos rancheros—all tasty and from scratch. There are lots of finger foods and minipancakes for kids. The lunch menu is lesser known, with good burgers, steak sandwiches, and even credible crab cakes. Weekend waits are mind-boggling, so call ahead. Service ranges from grandmotherly to borderline hostile, in the great diner tradition.
Muffuletta lost its chef and culinary vision when J. D. Fratzke decamped for The Strip Club this winter. But I trust the Parasole folks and know that Muffuletta was successful enough, so I believe they’ll maintain this latest iteration—it’s one of the few chef-driven restaurants focusing on locally sourced ingredients that’s a comfortable dining spot for families. It’s simple upscale bistro cooking, embellished with local meats and cheeses, plus a few heritage staples from the restaurant’s early days (beer cheese soup). Service is quick and knowledgeable, mac and cheese carries the day with the little ones, and the park in front of the library is a great place to burn off some energy between courses. I’ve been eating at Muffuletta since my Macalester days, and it always feels like home.

I’m going to recommend A to Z (Pizza) even though my son calls its pizza “disgusting and freaky.” He’s wrong; it’s the ultimate family food roadtrip in our region. Based at a small farm near Stockholm, Wisconsin (about ninety minutes from the metro, a mostly gorgeous drive along Lake Pepin), it boasts two outdoor brick pizza ovens that cook enormous pies slathered with house-cured meats, locally grown veggies, and cheeses. The pies are on the doughy, saucy side, but are plenty robust. If pizza’s not your thing, farm animals are out back, chickens cluck around, and the dining room is a verdant pasture, literally. Your seat is your butt. The pizzeria operates Tuesdays only, year-round. Oh, you need to bring plates, napkins, utensils, beverages, salad. All you get is a pizza box. Pack in, pack out. It’s a national park with pizza. But national parks don’t take checks.

If we’ve got less than five hours for pizza, or it’s Sunday, Punch is our place. The pizzas come fast—faster than you can find a seat some nights. But the toppings are fresh and great, the crust sublime, the authenticity enchanting. Kids watch the pizzaiolos do their thing, peer into the 800-degree oven, or run around and annoy the couples on a date. It’s a loud Neapolitan party, at least at our Punch in South Minne. My son, whose tastes run to Papa John’s, suggests I steer your kids to the off-menu pulcinella, kind of a distended thin-crust calzone stuffed with salad. He says your kids will love them. They probably won’t, so get them the Bambini pizza.

Town Talk Diner is not really built with kids in mind, but families have adopted it due to a menu that speaks to the kid in all of us. Pancakes at dinner, killer cheese curds, garlic fries, pulled pork, hot dogs, milk shakes . . . need I say more? (There’s tasty adult fare as well, such as braised lamb or Fischer Farms pork chops.) The food comes quickly, the servers understand dealing with families, and, if the place is slow, there are probably seats at the tiny counter, which kids love. If not, get more cheese curds, and forget the state fair.