The best family restaurants in the U.S.

None of my own kid-friendly spots made the list, because the mag only surveyed "more than 50 of the largest full-service or buffet-style restaurant chains." That's a problem right off -- I don't like the trap of equating "kid-friendly" with "kid-oriented" -- but I'll save that flame war for another time.

The magazine did a service by asking restaurants how they accommodate kids with food allergies. Friends in that boat tell me that chains, sadly, are usually far more forthright and helpful than independent restaurants when it comes to telling them what's in their food and helping them avoid allergens. (Shout-out to Danny at Impromptu for being an exception!) But I digress. Drumroll, please.

The most family-friendly restaurant in the country, Parents says, is ... one with no branches in the Seattle area. It's Legal Sea Foods, whose most popular kid entree is wood-grilled fish. The chain eliminated transfats five years ago, tests all tuna and swordfish for mercury, cooks non-seafood items on a separate grill to accommodate shellfish allergies, and limits salt. Number two? It's Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes, whose closest branch is in Vancouver, Wash.

To get remotely local, you need to drop to No. 5, Chili's -- but its only remaining Seattle-area location, after recently shutting down its Eastside branches, is at Sea-Tac Airport, which is something of a purgatory zone where everything seems equally kid-friendly or kid-demonic.

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Source - Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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