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Please palates for pbj appetites while making dining out a relaxing experience for mom and dad.
Family Restaurants
Family-friendly restaurants offer creative solutions to pleasing parents and kids alike. Color on paper tablecloths, play games, read menus with 3-D glasses and find selections for even the pickiest eaters at these family-oriented restaurants.
By Chelle Koster Walton, member of the Society of American Travel Writers
Family-friendly restaurants offer creative solutions to pleasing parents and kids alike. Color on paper tablecloths, play games, read menus with 3-D glasses and find selections for even the pickiest eaters at these family-oriented restaurants.
By Chelle Koster Walton, member of the Society of American Travel Writers
  Lazy Flamingo Restaurant |
"Sweet" restaurants in the words of my son, Aaron, at age 9, they sugar-coat the experience by deflecting boredom for eye-blink attention spans and pleasing palates for pbj appetites while making dining out a relaxing, tasty and local-flavorful experience for mom and dad. Below are our favorites that go beyond the obligatory kid’s menu and booster seats to accommodate families with a sense of place and taste.
Sanibel Island
Matzaluna – When Aaron was in elementary school, we’d go here for pizza (him) and pasta (us.) He’d take along toy cars and would draw racetracks on the butcher paper table covering with the provided crayons, effectively staying entertained until his pizza arrived.
Lazy Flamingo, Sanibel Island & Pine Island – Now that Aaron’s a teen, we have to use bribery just to get him to come out to eat with us. The "Flamingo" works every time because he loves the spicy chicken wings. The original at Blind Pass on Sanibel keeps kids busy with a hanging ring-on-a-string game.
Hungry Heron – Some restaurants in Aaron’s pre-teen vocabulary would rate a "sa-weet." Two syllables (like two thumbs) meant extra kid-pleasing, and Hungry Heron, with its cartoon-airing TVs and more than (count ’em together) 30 kid selections on the menu, definitely rates.
Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille – Sometimes family-friendly is more about an attitude than gimmicks, and that’s why you’ll see kids afternoons at Doc Ford’s, owned by local families with kids and named for the main character in the mystery novel series by local best-selling author Randy Wayne White. It’s just down the road from the school and ball fields, so families inevitably end up here after the game. Kids keep busy with fun games on the kid’s menu, and parents feel happy in the company of other families and the pleasure of tropically inclined specialties. When the sun goes down, the crowd takes on a decidedly more mature makeup.
Boca Grande & Outer Islands
Loose Caboose – Set in a real, historic train depot, it carries a sweet cargo of homemade ice cream and smoothies for bribery purposes. (I won’t tell the child-rearing experts if you won’t.) The from-scratch menu is designed for family appetites and budgets.
Cabbage Key Inn – It’s more than lunch. It’s an adventure. It requires a boat trip to get there – reserve a tour boat excursion from Captiva or Pine islands, or rent your own ride. Then relax on the patio, where the kids can race around the lawn and feed the ducks. Toast the day with Turtle Tonic and Cabbage Crawler kids cocktails.
Captiva Island
Bubble Room – Servers wearing funny hats, nostalgic toys everywhere, an electric train running under the ceiling and cake that’s sweet in anyone’s vocabulary: This place is equal parts fun house and restaurant.
RC Otter’s – You feel like you’ve stepped into a Sunday comic strip here, there’s so much color and animation. Kids can snap at gators: The Gator Bites stand among 20 small-fry entrees (not counting breakfast’s) priced at $4.99, plus there’s a slew of regular selections that are also kid-pleasers.
Bonita Beach
Big Hickory Seafood Grille – Egrets, pelicans and one little blue heron fish for their lunch while kids eat grouper "fingers" on the back porch of a bait shop-fishing charter shack. It’s pure Southwest Florida that couldn’t taste better.
Doc’s Beach House – The great thing about Doc’s is it’s right on the beach, and you can eat your burgers and pizza at an outdoor table, in downstairs’ casual dining room or, when you want to cool off, upstairs in the air-conditioning.
 Times Square |
Snug Harbor – Outdoors always makes a good venue for antsy kids, and here you’re seated with a front-row view of boat traffic. Grab a pair of 3D glasses when you enter so the kids can check out the cool sealife mural.
Parrot Key Caribbean Grill – It’s got color, it’s got casual, it’s got open-air seating dockside, it’s got locally made “Love Boat" ice cream and, on Wednesdays at 6 p.m., it hosts the inimitable form of family fun known as Nascrab. Name your hermit crab and compete for goofy prizes.
Times Square Sidewalk Eateries – Sit down at a sidewalk café for seafood or Greek, or buy slices of pizza and ice cream cones and plop down on the sand for an easy but not-easily-forgettable sunset repast.
Pine Island
Waterfront Restaurant – Here’s another place where you can take it outside, with a view of boats chugging into Monroe Canal. Aaron always loved the "Waterdoggie" foot-long hot dog and playing hangman on the paper tablecloths.
Fort Myers
Sanibel Harbour Restaurants – How cool is this: Reading the menu from pictures on a 3D Viewmaster™ ! They even cut the crusts from the pbjs. Parents will like that the burgers come with carrot sticks instead of fries. Overlook the pool and bay at the Tarpon House or jump on in and eat drip-and-dry poolside at Pelican Pool Bar & Grille.
Shrimp Shack, Two locations in Fort Myers (one in Cape Coral)– A gator and shark on motorcycles and a shrimp on a surfboard: These restaurants are all about Florida style with casual attitudes, colorful and cartoonish wall murals and, best of all, seafood. The kids will have fun popping popcorn shrimp into their mouths.
Broadway Palm Dinner Theater – Buffet line favorites such as pizza and mac‘n’cheese, plus family-tailored stage entertainment, such as The Little Mermaid and Jack and the Beanstalk in summer. It adds the cultural course to family dining, a course sweeter than dessert.
Joe’s Crab Shack – Order a round of Buccaneer Brews (kid punches) at this all-about-fun riverfront spot. A choice of veggies, fruit cup or fries accompanies the kids entrees. For the finale, they can build their own ice-cream sundaes.
Iguana Mia, Cape Coral, Fort Myers, and Bonita Springs – The bright colors and faux murals are fun, plus they give the kids a taste of something besides pbjs and pizza with an olé-okay! menu of tacos, quesadillas and more common fare (even pbj!).
If you go…
Big Hickory Seafood Grille, 239-992-0991, www.bighickorygrille.com
Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre, 239-278-4422, www.broadwaypalm.com
Bubble Room, 239-472-5558, www.bubbleroomrestaurant.com
Cabbage Key Inn, 239-283-2278, www.cabbagekey.com
Doc's Beach House, 239-992-6444, www.docsbeachhouse.com
Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille, 239-472-8311, www.docfordssanibel.com
Hungry Heron, 239-395-2300
Iguana Mia, 239-945-7755, 239-939-5247 and 239-949-1999, www.iguanamia.com
Joe’s Crab Shack, 239-332-1881, www.joescrabshack.com
Lazy Flamingo, 239-472-5353, 239-472-6939 and 239-283-5959, www.lazyflamingo.com
Loose Caboose, 941-964-0440
Matzaluna, 239-472-1998, www.prawnbroker.com/matzaluna
Parrot Key Caribbean Grill, 239-463-3257, www.myparrotkey.com
RC Otter’s, 239-395-1142, www.captivaislandinn.com/village/otters.htm
Restaurants at Sanibel Harbour Resort & Spa, 239-466-4000, www.sanibel-resort.com/Dining/Dining_Restaurants_Cuisine.asp
Shrimp Shack, 239-561-6817 and 239-277-5100 (Fort Myers); 239-772-1060 (Cape Coral)
Snug Harbor, 239-463-4343, snugharborrestaurant.com
Waterfront Restaurant, 239-283-0592, www.waterfrontrestaurant.com
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