Before Logan, I never really noticed that some restaurants really aren't all that family friendly - and not just the fancy ones. I am wondering if everyone can suggest good family friendly restaurants and warn me about ones that they know definitely do not welcome little ones. I don't want anymore angry glares!

Buffet style best for our fam anywhere we ever lived or Golden Corral ,Dennys always great, Ihops  often nice also Friendlys , China Buffet , Cracker Barrells  usually fun, Any Sandwhich /fast food w Play areas  good for action .... bad on nutrition often  tho Chick Filet better in fast food lists ..  

any asian restaurant is usually a good place to take kids even if it is a slightly upper scale one they all seem to give the kids lots of attention and have fun with them.

claim jumper they have a placemat that sticks to the table and of course the crayons to color but they also offer a free baby toddler plate that comes with rolls of deli sliced meat and sliced fruit its over all a very family friendly place.

macayos family friendly decent kids menu shamrock farms flavored milk (strawberry has always been simons favorite). simon pigs out on chips and salsa then pigs out on quesadilla and mexican rice.

chipotle we eat here often since simon loves it usally quite a few ppl with kids and they will make quesadillas and stuff for kids you just have to ask as their not on menu simon just eats our food no matter how spicy it is.   

carrabas gives them pizza dough to play with, macaroni grill is very family friendly and they give a mulitpage coloring book to color in while waiting, rockbottom used to let older kids build thier own pizza dont know if they still do this.

ill try and think of more we have taken simon alot of places since we eat out all the time his first bite of real food was jambalaya at rockbottom when he was still pretty little and so started his love affair with spicy food.

We tend to go to places with patios - now is not the best season in AZ, but most of hte year pretty good - the reason is you can dine on the patio and not be as distruptive.

Red Robin, Teakwoods, most pizza places, are all pretty good.  In the East Valley, we eat at YC's Mongolian BBQ.  Paradise Bakery is pretty good too.

More casual places with speedy service are key.  We have a window of about 45 minutes before it gets difficult to manage the attention span.  Timing the dining out experience around the ideal time for our son's schedule made the process easier.

If the child gets fussy, take turns tending to him/her away for the dining experience - this always helped manage looks by those who obviously didn't understand.

I recently read for toddler dining, that between order time & when the food arrives, it can be helpful to walk with the child elsewhere to help them burn off some energy - I know that your son is young for that right now but hopefully it helps.

We also have realized, we are limited to 1 dining out experience a day.  Pre-kid, on the weekends we would eat out lunch & dinner - now it is only one or hte other.  Rivers does well for one meal, but 2 in 1 day that pushes it and the 2nd is always difficult.

Below is a link to a list of AZ "kid-friendly" restaurants - may give some ideas. 

http://arizonamoms.com/guides/food/25-great-k ...

went to the chinese cultural center last nite with our friends that have 3 boys we let the kids check out the garden and pond first they were amazed by the big koi and there was also a mother duck with babies in one of the smaller water areas. they had a blast running around and were more than ready to sit down at the restaurant and get drinks simon was actually bright red and dripping sweat but he has to work alittle harder to keep up with the older boys hehe. the restaurant we went to is lao ching hing we have been going here for awhile just hadnt been there in a really long time. when we first walked in they were surprised to see that it was all boys hehe but once we were seated they started to have some fun with the kids. they brought out fortune cookies for them to tide them over and had fun talking to all the kids. we thought we were being noisy but there was a big filipino family behind us and after they left the place got really really quite so we wernt the noisy ones after all hehe. simon ate a ton of rice the other kids were being kinda picky but that is normal. after we left the restaurant we let the kids run around and play for a bit on the stage right in fron of the restaurant then went into the asian grocery store (lee lees is better but we were right there hehe). the older kids had fun looking at all the fun interesting foods that they had never seen before and kinda freaking out over the whole frozen lamb head hehe, they liked watching the live catfish and eels and seemed to of had good time. so if you are looking for something alittle different to do i suggest going to the chinese cultural center and checking out as much stuff as possible. theres also a cool gift shop with some other little stores inside it that we usally check out to but they were closed when we were there this time.

heres the restaurant http://www.phxchinatown.com/lao_ching.html ...

and heres the website fr the whole place http://www.phxchinatown.com/ ... 

heres 2 pics from yesterday its kinda foggy in the one corner simon got ahold of my camera when we went to prescott on saturday and i forgot to clean it hehe.

Wow SJ    Those look REALLY  FUN And Unique  places to dine  w kids  and some really Interesing  /varied  Menus as well .   Tho Pezzes  choice w pics   looks great also ...