Family Friendly Restaurants

If you were asked to name the best family friendly restaurants in Bend Oregon, what would your choices be? Tonight I received an email from a family that is going to be visiting Bend this weekend with quadruplets that are celebrating their 12th birthdays. Oh my goodness!! Could you imagine? I’ve written about dining out with kids before but I couldn’t imagine going out to eat with four kids every time. That’s like taking out two other couples every time you go out to eat!

Andre Jensen wrote a good article on his top 5 family friendly restaurants over at True North Parenting which I will totally agree with. Deschutes, BBC, Baldy’s, SOBA, El Caporal, 38 Degrees, and Jake’s are all great places to take the fam. If you’re going to take your kids to 38 Degrees, go on Tuesday for their special Tapas Tuesday’s menu on top of their normal menu.

One of the questions in the original email was about which restaurants will sing Happy Birthday or do something special for the birthday child. I instantly thought about one of my favorite movies “Waiting” when the waitress yells “Birthday Singers!!” and everyone groans and cusses before singing one of the worst birthday songs to an oversized 6 year old.

The only places that I know in town that will sing Happy Birthday are Red Robin and Every Mexican Restaurant. I like El Caporal where they sing in Spanish and again in English and will take your photo in a Sombrero. But I’m 89% sure they do the same at the other El Caporalesque restaurants in Bend.

Red Robin is ass and they sing Happy Birthday every 37 seconds. Time it….I’m accurate. There was a study at the University of PSU that the average Red Robin employee loses their upper register by the age of 37 due to their overactive singing glands, which is 58% higher than the average Red Robin employee in China. Google it.

If you know of another restaurant that you’d recommend for birthday kids please feel free to let me know. If you say that pizza place by Fred Meyers, I’ll block you from my site.

Tumalo Feed Company is a good one and rather affordable, I’d take that pack of kids there for sure, even though I don’t have a review of them.

UPDATE: Alandra Johnson from the Bulletin has compiled a list of family friendly restaurants HERE. The list is pretty good but a little heavy on the chain restaurants. Everyone knows that McDonalds is kid friendly. I’d like to see the chain restaurants in their own section at the bottom of the list with the local restaurants towards the top.

Now I want to see a list of Adults Only restaurants or Date Night Dinners.

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