FREDRIC KOEPPEL | Special to The Memphis News
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
So, you’re in the restaurant, the family and the kids. Everybody is behaving well, speaking in “inside voices,” including the adults. So far, so good, but the point is, what is everybody going to eat? The kids take one peek at the menu and look as if they’re beginning to tune up: “Mom, Dad, we hate tilapia with Southwestern succotash and mango-jicama relish!” Mom says, hopefully, “Look, Dick, look, Jane, there’s a kid’s menu! You love kid’s menus!” Signaling the helpful waiter for another martini.
Dick and Jane look at where Mom is pointing at the bottom of the menu and, lo and behold, there are all their favorite foods! Chicken tenders! Hot dogs! Macaroni and cheese! Grilled cheese sammich! Lots of fried stuff! Lots of cheese, fat and cholesterol, but who cares, they’re young, they have a whole lifetime to work it off!
Actually, that’s an approximation of the Kid’s Menu at Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar, which reads in full: Chicken Tenders, Mini Cheeseburger, Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Oreo Cookie Shake, Oreo Cookie Sundae. (Applebee’s is owned by DineEquity Inc., formerly IHOP Corp.)
At Chili’s Grill & Bar Restaurant – the chain is owned by Brinker International – the extensive Pepper Pal Kid’s Menu features such items as burgers and cheeseburgers, cheese pizza and cheese quesadillas, several grilled chicken selections, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese – are you thinking that Kraft sells a lot of product to Applebee’s and Chili’s? – and both Little Chicken Crispies and Crispy Chicken Crispies. Which one is crispier?
At Olive Garden, a subsidiary of Darden Restaurants Inc, the menu for children includes a make-your-own pasta feature, the ubiquitous macaroni and cheese, cheese or pepperoni pizza, cheese ravioli and chicken fingers pasta.
Notice that the examples I cite – which could be multiplied – are kids’ menus from national chain restaurants that have stores in our region. The reason is that most local establishments don’t feature specific menus or portions of menus for theoretically fussy children; I spent an afternoon checking out the websites of 30 or so local restaurants and turned up little in that direction, not even from such old guard representatives of traditional Memphis dining as Jim’s Place and Pete & Sam’s.
Ciao Bella has a children’s menu, but it consists of kid-sized portion of items that are on the regular menu. I suspect that if parents took an 8-year-old to a “grown-up” restaurant and asked for a small plate of simple pasta with butter and a little Parmesan, it wouldn’t be a problem. That’s what good restaurants do.
It’s not surprising that the locally owned and family-oriented Soul Fish Café has a children’s section on the menu. Here patrons will find fried catfish nuggets, chicken tenders and three sandwiches: grilled cheese, peanut butter and jelly, and ham and cheese; all of these items are accompanied by French fries.
“We don’t have a kids’ menu per se,” said Jeff Dunham, owner of The Grove Grill in Laurelwood, “though we did when the restaurant opened 14 years ago. I mainly leave it up to the servers and give them the latitude to talk to people with children and figure out what the kids would like. We can make a grilled cheese sandwich or a cheese quesadilla. Children always ask for chicken tenders. If a kid wants chicken in the quesadilla, well, we can do that. We’re a neighborhood restaurant, we do get families, so we try and be flexible.”
What Dunham called “the buttered noodle thing” is popular and illustrates how flexible the kitchen has to be.
“Kids are used to eating the way their parents cook for them at home,” Dunham said, “so there’s a lot of specificity. With the buttered noodles, we used to put a little parsley on there, but some kids objected. We grate a little pecorino cheese on top, but then there are kids that don’t want the cheese. The point is to let the server talk to the child or the parents and then deliver something that stays within our product range and hopefully keeps everybody happy.”
What’s a bit dismaying is that these examples of food intended for children dining out with their parents assumes that kids basically want the same stuff to eat at a “good” restaurant as at a chain restaurant. Well, that may be true, but could the circumstance arise from the combined propaganda of the television commercials constantly bombarding children about the virtues of fried food and from parents themselves who don’t push their children to expand their taste, senses and experience.
I have heard parents tell their children, “Don’t look at that part of the menu. It’s for grown-ups. You wouldn’t like that food,” and then direct the innocent little ones to the section of simple, familiar fried food slathered with cheese.
In other words, let’s just make it easy on everyone and take the path of least culinary resistance.
I can’t help going back to the menu at South of Beale and considering what kids would eat from it, since there is no kids’ menu. (Oh, come on, why not take a child to a gastropub?)
There are chicken wings, grilled not fried. There’s a pulled pork egg roll served with a Dr Pepper curry sauce; how cool is that? There’s vegetable noodle soup with ravioli. There’s a burger, of course, a smothered chicken sandwich and fish and chips, yes the fish is fried. And a leek and asiago mac ‘n’ cheese, OK, well, there’s the cheese. Yes, this is food designed for adults but kids could chow down on this sort of fare without being made to look stupid.
Dick and Jane look at where Mom is pointing at the bottom of the menu and, lo and behold, there are all their favorite foods! Chicken tenders! Hot dogs! Macaroni and cheese! Grilled cheese sammich! Lots of fried stuff! Lots of cheese, fat and cholesterol, but who cares, they’re young, they have a whole lifetime to work it off!
(Photo illustration: Emily Morrow)
At Chili’s Grill & Bar Restaurant – the chain is owned by Brinker International – the extensive Pepper Pal Kid’s Menu features such items as burgers and cheeseburgers, cheese pizza and cheese quesadillas, several grilled chicken selections, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese – are you thinking that Kraft sells a lot of product to Applebee’s and Chili’s? – and both Little Chicken Crispies and Crispy Chicken Crispies. Which one is crispier?
At Olive Garden, a subsidiary of Darden Restaurants Inc, the menu for children includes a make-your-own pasta feature, the ubiquitous macaroni and cheese, cheese or pepperoni pizza, cheese ravioli and chicken fingers pasta.
Notice that the examples I cite – which could be multiplied – are kids’ menus from national chain restaurants that have stores in our region. The reason is that most local establishments don’t feature specific menus or portions of menus for theoretically fussy children; I spent an afternoon checking out the websites of 30 or so local restaurants and turned up little in that direction, not even from such old guard representatives of traditional Memphis dining as Jim’s Place and Pete & Sam’s.
Ciao Bella has a children’s menu, but it consists of kid-sized portion of items that are on the regular menu. I suspect that if parents took an 8-year-old to a “grown-up” restaurant and asked for a small plate of simple pasta with butter and a little Parmesan, it wouldn’t be a problem. That’s what good restaurants do.
It’s not surprising that the locally owned and family-oriented Soul Fish Café has a children’s section on the menu. Here patrons will find fried catfish nuggets, chicken tenders and three sandwiches: grilled cheese, peanut butter and jelly, and ham and cheese; all of these items are accompanied by French fries.
“We don’t have a kids’ menu per se,” said Jeff Dunham, owner of The Grove Grill in Laurelwood, “though we did when the restaurant opened 14 years ago. I mainly leave it up to the servers and give them the latitude to talk to people with children and figure out what the kids would like. We can make a grilled cheese sandwich or a cheese quesadilla. Children always ask for chicken tenders. If a kid wants chicken in the quesadilla, well, we can do that. We’re a neighborhood restaurant, we do get families, so we try and be flexible.”
What Dunham called “the buttered noodle thing” is popular and illustrates how flexible the kitchen has to be.
“I have heard parents tell their children, “Don’t look at that part of the menu. It’s for grown-ups. You wouldn’t like that food,” and then direct the innocent little ones to the section of simple, familiar fried food slathered with cheese.”
What’s a bit dismaying is that these examples of food intended for children dining out with their parents assumes that kids basically want the same stuff to eat at a “good” restaurant as at a chain restaurant. Well, that may be true, but could the circumstance arise from the combined propaganda of the television commercials constantly bombarding children about the virtues of fried food and from parents themselves who don’t push their children to expand their taste, senses and experience.
I have heard parents tell their children, “Don’t look at that part of the menu. It’s for grown-ups. You wouldn’t like that food,” and then direct the innocent little ones to the section of simple, familiar fried food slathered with cheese.
In other words, let’s just make it easy on everyone and take the path of least culinary resistance.
I can’t help going back to the menu at South of Beale and considering what kids would eat from it, since there is no kids’ menu. (Oh, come on, why not take a child to a gastropub?)
There are chicken wings, grilled not fried. There’s a pulled pork egg roll served with a Dr Pepper curry sauce; how cool is that? There’s vegetable noodle soup with ravioli. There’s a burger, of course, a smothered chicken sandwich and fish and chips, yes the fish is fried. And a leek and asiago mac ‘n’ cheese, OK, well, there’s the cheese. Yes, this is food designed for adults but kids could chow down on this sort of fare without being made to look stupid.
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