Dining out with kids doesn’t have to feel like a chore when a restaurant ticks off all the right boxes: high chairs and booster seats (call ahead for availability), a set of crayons, a menu with options for picky eaters, and perhaps even space to run around. It’s also a lot more pleasurable when an establishment actually welcomes babies, toddlers, kids, and even tweens. When dining out with children, it’s a chance to not only share a meal but it can be an educational experience as well — it all depends on choosing the right restaurant for diners of all ages.
Read MoreThe Most Kid-Friendly Restaurants in NYC
Dining out with babies, toddlers, kids, and even tweens can actually be enjoyable
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
This sprawling barbecue with plenty of parking in the vicinity serves some of the city’s better smoked meats, spanning a pan-regional selection of styles. Since its founding in 2004, the menu has only gotten longer, adding sliders, banh mi, bowls, po’ boys, cheesesteak sandwiches, grilled salmon, and many other lures for kids and adults. Sides are particularly noteworthy, including good baked beans, great mac and cheese, and Syracuse salt potatoes, a nod to Dinosaur’s upstate New York hometown.
Harlem Shake
Done up like a rockin’ ‘50s diner with lots of chrome, twirling stools, and a turquoise color scheme, Harlem Shake specializes in heavily seared smash burgers, along with dressed fries, chicken sandwiches, and hot dogs. Soft serve ice cream is a secondary focus, with shakes topped with whipped cream and root beer floats. For parents, there are beers and pitchers of mimosas.
Also featured in:
Good Enough To Eat
This Upper West Side staple has been feeding families since 1981, with an emphasis on salads, sandwiches, chili and the like, and with special attention paid to breakfasts ranging from Austin-style migas to eggs Florentine. There’s a build-a-burger option that runs to dozens of choices, and an opportunity to order thick shakes alongside. No mystery why so many families with small children dine here. Dinner features a bargain prix-fixe menu of four courses.
Also featured in:
Parm Upper West Side
This accessible Italian American restaurant (with several locations) offers comfort food familiarity in a casual dining room. It’s a good place to grab a minute of peace and collect yourself while kids enjoy the make your own sammy or make your own pasta options on the kids menu. Don’t miss the 4 to 7 p.m. half-off happy hour snacks like meatballs and garlic knots weekdays.
Old John's Luncheonette
Diners are great for kids and this one was recently spruced up and made to look more sleekly retro-modern; about 50 percent of the menu remains traditional, while the other half incorporates dishes that would be natural to a diner menu if the diner as an institution were invented today, including breakfasts like avocado toast, huevos rancheros, and Italian frittatas.
Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao
Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, Flushing’s resident soup dumpling experts, has become something of a mini-chain, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. The menu lists several types of soup dumplings, including their signature pork-and-shrimp versions, as well as a deluxe version with “watercolor swirl skins” with specialty ingredients.
Cowgirl
This Western-themed honky-tonk has been delighting parents and kids alike for decades with its Southern and Southwestern food, and its exhibit of ranch and cowgirl memorabilia. There’s even a small toy store implanted in the front of the restaurant, and good strong drinks for the parents. Begin with the famous black-eyed-pea dip, and then progress to a Frito pie, chicken-fried steak, or the excellent barbecued ribs. For dessert, there’s an ice cream made to look like a baked potato.
Also featured in:
John's of Bleecker St.
What kid doesn’t love pizza? Or for that matter, what adult? This venerable coal-oven pizzeria, filled with wooden booths and murals of Naples, has been entertaining families for a century. The pies cook in just a minute or two and are whisked to the table. While you wait, there’s a rudimentary salad dressed with olive oil and red wine vinegar. The pizza crusts are thin, the tomato sauce plain, and toppings not overly profuse. This place offers some of the best New York-style pies in the city.
Also featured in:
Hamburger America
This new luncheonette burger destination from burger historian George Motz offers some carefully researched burgers, egg creams, french fries, egg salad sandwiches, pie, and cookies. For the little kids, there are PBJs; for their parents, beer. This is a fun spot for the whole family.
Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream
With its vast range of flavors, Morgenstern’s provides picky kids with more choices than they know what to do with, including entire rosters of vanillas and chocolates, and flavors featuring candy and nuts implanted in the ice cream. As of late there are also great smash burgers and fries, so that it’s possible to eat your entire family meal here at mainly outdoor tables.
Also featured in:
Gertie
This kid-friendly corner cafe punches above its weight with its menu of modern Jew(ish) dishes and baked goods. The chicken schnitzel with challah is a banger, and the bagels remind us of some of Manhattan’s best, even if they don’t always get the recognition they deserve.
Juliana's
This successor to next-door Grimaldi’s (still open, but not as good as it once was) keeps up the faith where coal-fired ovens are concerned, baking the pies to within an inch of their lives in a couple of minutes. Pizza is something both kids and their parents can agree on, the Juliana’s are real gourmet pies, the equal of any in Brooklyn, the pizza capital of the world. Fennel sausage and onion pies are a favorite.
Also featured in:
Junior's Restaurant & Bakery
This Brooklyn landmark — convenient to the Manhattan Bridge, BQE, and a slew of subways — has been around since 1950. It started life as a Jewish deli, but over the years, it extended its menu to better reflect Brooklyn’s population. Besides matzo ball soup, latkes, and a range of reubens (one with turkey), it also offers barbecued pork ribs, Philly cheesesteaks, fried calamari, avocado toasts — and all-day breakfasts. Pro tip: Save room for the cheesecake.
Cafe Spaghetti
Down by the old container port in what is now delicately called the Columbia Waterfront District, Cafe Spaghetti appeared this past summer with great fanfare. The menu offered Italian-American dishes only slightly updated, with plenty of pastas and a wine list that leans natural. More important is the giant fenced backyard with its shaded tables and an ornamental scooter that kids love to climb on.
Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain
There’s tons for kids to ogle when they enter Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain, a longtime favorite carved from a former pharmacy that dates to a century ago, featuring milkshakes, sundaes, sandwiches, pastries, and homemade sodas. A display of tin wind-up toys makes this child-friendly place feel like museum, and watching the soda jerks making milkshakes and floats is an education in itself.
Bamboo Garden
Head to this spacious Sunset Park spot, which got a full facelift in 2017, for a festive Chinese meal. Dim sum is reliably fun-filled and gregarious, with lots of surrounding action and no need to worry about kids being noisy or long waits for food. Expect a plethora of dumplings, taro cakes, and slippery, shrimp-studded har gow. Bamboo Garden also turns out massive soup dumplings that require a straw to eat. During the evenings, the menu emphasizes pricier seafood.