Stone Hearth Pizza, Belmont, MA

It's not often that I get the opportunity to write one post for two blogs, but Stone Hearth Pizza in Belmont, MA fits the bill. We've dined at the Stone Hearth Pizza in Cambridge near Porter Sq., but the restaurant there is small, cramped, and suffers from slow service. We'd heard that the Belmont restaurant was larger and had better kid amenities, so we decided to check it out.

The Belmont restaurant is indeed about three times the size of the Cambridge location and rather more plush, but it had no kid amenities at all. And where the Cambridge location has one wall covered with placemats colored in by their underage patrons, the Belmont location has no such kid-friendly atmosphere.

The food, as always, is quite good. Stone Hearth Pizza uses local, mostly organic ingredients. Their menu and their pizza boxes feature a map of New England showing exactly where their ingredients come from (see a complete list here). Their pizzas are inventive and tasty. Our favorites are the Sausage and Carmelized Onion pizza and Bacon and Blue pizza.

This time out, we tried the Farm Fresh pizza, which sounded great on paper: "Garlic oil, cherry tomatoes, charred red/yellow peppers, Yukon gold potatoes, artichoke hearts, green/black olives, fresh mozzarella, topped with salad of arugula/red onion/prosciutto." Unfortunately, the olives completely overwhelmed the flavors of the other vegetables. When we picked the olives off (to our omnivorous two-year-old's delight), we discovered that the pizza without them had hardly any flavor at all.

The girls had better luck with their pizzas. Our five-year-old practically inhaled her cheese pizza, and our two-year-old had to compete with her daddy to finish her cheeseburger pizza. We knew from past experience to stay away from the mac 'n' cheese, which was oddly too spicy for the kids to eat. I like it that way, but the kids won't touch it.

The kid's meals included drinks (lemonade and chocolate milk, respectively) and desserts, a choice of cookies or gelato. Both girls chose the gelato, vanilla and chocolate respectively, and my husband also ordered the hazelnut. The vanilla gelato's vanilla flavor was overpowering, and my five-year-old gratefully traded her sister for the chocolate when she was done with it. My husband's hazelnut gelato was chunky with bits of hazelnut but also somehow over-flavored. The chocolate, however, was quite good.

Regardless of how good the meals were and the quality of the ingredients, we got some mild sticker shock from the price: $8.50 for a kid's meal is a bit much, especially when we paid only $12.50 for our own pizza. Then again, when you do the math, an 8" cheese pizza is $5.60, a drink is $2, and gelato is $4 (two cookies are $1), for a total of $11.60, which means the kid's meal is actually a bargain. I do wish, however, that just one of the kid's meals had included vegetables.

Overall, while I applaud Stone Hearth Pizza's commitment to local, organic foods, I'm not all that impressed by either their pizzas or their prices. Zing! Pizza in Porter Sq. also uses local, organic ingredients, has more interesting and inventive pizzas, is less expensive, and they deliver. Their restaurant is seriously tiny, though, so if you want to eat out, Stone Hearth pizza is a better bet. If you're eating in Cambridge, I recommend that you call ahead and order in advance to compensate for the slow wait staff. For the record, the service at the Belmont location was fine.

Restaurant ratings:

2 smileys for good, friendly service


4 carrots for exceedingly healthy food

 

2 moos for slightly pricey food, particularly the kid's meals

Not So Friendly's

Disclaimer: I don't like "family dining" restaurant chains. In my experience, they're family-friendly only in that they're cheap, and that means poor quality and virtually no fresh vegetables. So I was already skeptical when some friends told us that Friendly's had changed its menu and was now actually a pretty decent place to eat. In particular, they said, their new grilled chicken pesto sandwich was quite good. Last night, we gave in and agreed to give Friendly's another try.

Once again, I was reminded of why I hate restaurants like this. Just because you have gaudily painted walls, ample high chairs, and ice cream sundaes, that doesn't make you a kid-friendly restaurant. We went to the Friendly's in Bedford, which was cramped and nearly windowless with no play space for the kids. And the service, while indeed friendly, was glacially slow.

Dining with children is a race: will the food arrive before the kids completely melt down in their seats? Any restaurant that caters to families with small children ought to understand this. In this respect, Friendly's failed miserably. We ordered our food, and five precious minutes later, the waitress came back and informed us that they were out of pesto, which meant that three of the adults had to reorder. Had the waitress been clever, she would have put in the kid's orders in advance. Instead, our meal was delayed by ten minutes.

By the time the Fribble milkshakes arrived, the kids were already thoroughly bored of their crayons and activity placemats. The Fribbles and serial trips to the potty kept them occupied for about half of the remaining time-to-food. Fortunately, we had gone to Arlington Town Day in the morning, and I had various toys the kids had won at carnival games: yo-yo, articulated snake, bracelets and magnifying glasses. This bought another five minutes or so. I began converting placemats into paper airplanes. We played musical chairs. We had just started a game of 20 questions when the food arrived.

The adult food arrived first, and they had gotten my order wrong (honey barbeque chicken sandwich instead of honey mustard chicken sandwich, and no side salad). We bought off the kids with french fries until their Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese finally arrived, and then it was too hot to eat. Quick! Remind them of the Fribbles. Finally, the pasta cooled, my food arrived, and we could all eat.

To be fair, my chicken sandwich was pretty good, if rather messy (dripping honey mustard sauce everywhere), and the kids' meals do now offer vegetable sides (our two-year-old omnivore got broccoli and then stole her sister's franks). The salad, on the other hand, was pathetic: iceberg lettuce topped with red onion rings, shredded cheese, croutons, and exactly two cherry tomatoes. And my fries were, well, limp.

Then came time to order ice cream, which we felt honor-bound to stay and eat because it came free with our food. This entailed another round of kid entertainment, consisting mostly of the potty-trained going to the bathroom again and my rather tired two-year-old curling up in my lap. We arrived at Friendly's around 5:30. We left at 7:45, full but exhausted.

The one good thing about this experience was that it was vastly cheap, coming to less than $40 for a family of four. But I would gladly have paid more for swift, competent service and happier children.

Restaurant Ratings:

1 smiley for lousy amenities and service.


1 carrot for generally unhealthy food.


1 moo for dirt cheap prices.

Not Your Average Joe's - Arlington, MA

It's been a few years since we dared try Not Your Average Joe's restaurant in Arlington Center. While I've always liked the fresh, delicious food, and the staff have been indulgent of child diners, my elder daughter found the room far too enticing and would keep wiggling out of her seat and running delightedly around the restaurant. Chasing her became too much of a chore, especially when I was vastly pregnant, so we stopped going.

Today, with our elder daughter, now five years old, and her much calmer two-year-old sibling, we tried Not Your Average Joe's again for lunch, and we were pleased with the results.

NYAJ's decor is fun and interesting. While the carpet and seating are in soft, muted colors, the top 18 inches or so of every wall is painted with colored squares and dots. Rod iron sculptures are scattered throughout the room: people on swings, a human pyramid, hands on the walls on which to hang coats, hangers over the brick oven for the pizza servers, etc. The yellow, orange, and blue lamps over the booths and bar area give the room a warm glow. We were easily able to distract our energetic five-year-old with these fun features: how many yellow lamps do you see? How many sculptures of people on swings? How many dots painted on the wall have two colors? Our two-year-old happily drew with crayons and munched on the delicious bread.

The kids' menu is quite good, offering cheese pizza, mac and cheese, hand-breaded chicken fingers, grilled cheese, and pasta with butter or tomato sauce for young kids. For older kids, they have balsamic glazed salmon, sirloin tips, angus sirloin burger, and grilled chicken. About half of these dishes come with a choice of side: french fries, vegetables, or fresh fruit. For our kids, we ordered the mac and cheese and the angus burger with green beans. We also ordered a side of cooked carrots. When I mentioned that we were going to be splitting the food between the girls, the waitress offered to have that done for us in the kitchen.

And they did. Each girl got a bowl with half a kid's portion of mac and cheese and a plate with half the angus burger, green beans, and carrots. Now, here's the best part: the girls were so happy with the mac and cheese and the vegetables, they didn't even touch the burgers (well, our elder daughter took one nibble).

As for the adults, I had the spinach and pear salad, which was awesome, exactly what I'd been wanting, and my husband had the chicken piccata, one of his favorites, which also came with green beans. The beans were cooked perfectly - just slightly crunchy. The carrots were also sweet and delicious but not mushy. The mac and cheese was lovely, neither overly bland nor overly rich. Honestly, the least tasty thing we got was, in fact, the burger. Which is not to say that it was bad; it was just... a burger.

We didn't stay for the kids' free ice cream dessert - our two-year-old was curled up on the booth seat trying to nap by the end of the meal - but we did leave satisfied and happy. For such a reasonable price, the food quality was excellent, and so was the service. The one thing that would make this restaurant perfect would be a kids' corner, where quick or picky eaters can go to hang out, letting their slower-eating parents enjoy their meal. By the end of the meal, our five-year-old was scaling the back of the booth and escaping once again, but now she's old enough that she was merely asserting her independence and desire for more personal space by annexing the booth behind us. Fortunately, Sunday lunches appear to be pretty slow there, and the booth - along with 3/4 of the restaurant - was unoccupied.

- 3 smileys for good service and fun atmosphere
- 3 carrots for healthy food
- 1 moo for reasonable price

Added Ratings

When I posted my first two restaurant reviews, I failed to use my smiley/carrot/moo rating system. I've now updated both posts with ratings, listed at the end of each post.

Resource: FoodieMommy

My husband came across a great blog: FoodieMommy. This site lists several kid-friendly restaurants in the Boston area. We'll have to try them all for ourselves.

Alfresco Restaurant, 382 Highland Ave, Somerville, MA

Alfresco Restaurant, in the former location of Out of the Blue near Davis Square, has been one of our favorites for a while. Its Sunday brunch got rave reviews a year or so ago, and we've therefore avoided the Sunday brunch, but we like to go during the week, when it's quiet and uncrowded.

Alfresco serves consistently delicious Italian food, always a kid-pleaser, and it's reasonably priced, with the most expensive dish around $15. We used to get the seafood bruschetta every time we came until we got thoroughly sick of it. The restaurant is small and has no kid amenities beyond high chairs, but that block of Highland Ave has plenty to interest small kids, including When Pigs Fly bakery for fresh bread, the Dairy Bar for fresh, local goods (milk in glass bottles!), and Kick*ss Cupcakes for dessert. So we order, then one of us takes the kids for a walk. The food comes, we sit the kids down to eat, and when they're done, the other of us takes them for another walk. It works out nicely.

A few days ago, with our kitchen faucet broken and no running water in the kitchen, we threw our hands up and went out to Alfresco for dinner. There, we got not only great food but, hands down, the best, most kid-friendly service we've ever experienced. It was amazing.

First, since the restaurant was nearly empty when we arrived, the waitress who met us let the kids pick their table. There were two waitresses who served us more or less equally and worked very well as a team. We ordered our drinks, and they brought milk in a take-out coffee cup with a straw for our two-year-old, a pretty common trick that most restaurants use.

While my husband took the kids for a potty break, I ordered: tortellini with prosciutto for my husband, porcini ravioli for myself, fettucine alfredo for the girls to split, and an Alfresco Salad, which was listed as an assortment of grilled vegetables, for all of us to share.

A waitress brought out sliced bread with a dish of olive oil, a dish of spicy red pepper aioli, and a dish of grated parmesan cheese. Our kids dug into this gleefully, dipping in the olive oil, then the parmesan, spreading both liberally over the table. Our two-year-old tried the aioli, burst into tears, and kept on eating it because even with the spiciness, it was delicious.

As they were demolishing the bread, our salad arrived, and here's my one gripe: it was the wrong salad. Instead of grilled vegetables, we got a warm spinach salad. This turned out to be utterly delicious. The spinach was layered with sauteed mushrooms, topped with crispy bits of prosciutto, and ringed with fresh feta-like cheese and slices of tomato, all dressed in a balsamic vinegrette. Our two-year-old claimed half the tomatoes, and my husband and I ate the rest with glee.

And then the waitresses arrived to clear the table for our entrees. To our complete astonishment and delight, they didn't just take away the empty plates. They removed the now-empty breadbasket and the accompanying dishes, and they CLEANED THE TABLE. All of it, the dribbles of olive oil and spatters of parmesan and crusts and general kid-generated clutter, so that we had a clean table when the food came.

And that brought another surprise. Rather than bringing us the fettucine alfredo and two small plates for the girls, they actually served it in two small bowls, half for each, which meant that we could all immediately dig into our dinners. This tiny detail was so thoughtful and lovely that it was sad that the thermal heat of the pasta undid it - we had to spoon off some of the noodles to cool enough for the girls to eat.

And then they brought another breadbasket with olive oil and parmesan, no aioli, for the girls. Quick studies, these women.

After one bite each, my husband and I promptly traded our dishes. I love mushrooms, but I'm not thrilled with cream sauce, and he loves tortellini and prosciutto but not tomato sauce. The trade fixed this problem admirably. The creamy tomato sauce on the tortellini was heavenly, and after I had finished the pasta, I kept snitching bread from the girls to sop up the remaining sauce. My husband expressed similar satisfaction with the cream sauce on his ravioli in contented monosyllables.

We polished off our dishes, but even after dividing the fettucine, there was still enough left over to feed the girls the next day. They wrapped it up for us, along with the remaining bread, while my husband and the girls meandered down the block for cupcakes. When the check came, I gave them a 25% tip and wrote under it, "Best Service Ever." I meant it. Never, in the five years since my first daughter was born, have I experienced the caliber of service that these two women provided us. Perhaps the fact that one of them was pregnant helped.

I urge you to try this restaurant. The food is excellent, the neighborhood is fun, and you'll leave relaxed and happy, a rarity when dining out with children.

EDIT: Restaurant ratings:

3 smileys for fabulous service

3 carrots for healthy food

1 moo for low price

Full Moon Restaurant, 344 Huron Ave., Cambridge

I first heard about Full Moon back when they were located on Mass Ave in Arlington (where Za is now). I was pregnant with my first child and invited a pregnant friend to come and try it out with me. At the time, we thought it was good food but overpriced. A few years later, we tried Full Moon in its new location on Huron Ave in Cambridge with our 3-year-old, and we had the same impression. Yes, the food was good, but not outstanding, and a little pricey. Yes, the play area was nice, but not nice enough to keep our 3-year-old occupied throughout dinner so that we could eat peacefully.

How things change. Today, we tried Full Moon for brunch with our five-year-old, her best friend (also five), and our two-year-old. And it was lovely.

The restaurant was about three-quarters full with lots of other children ranging from 12 months to 12 years dining their with their families. The train table was very popular, as was the play kitchen along the wall. Every dining table was covered with white sheets of paper and equipped with a cup of assorted crayons.

And the menu was excellent. The adult fare was well balanced between breakfast and lunch offerings. My husband ordered the huevos rancheros, and I ordered the curried chicken salad over mesclun greens. The kids' menu was not only varied but more nutritionally balanced than most kid menus I've ever seen. One five-year-old ordered the cheese pizza with fruit. The other ordered the hot dog with french fries and fruit. Our two-year-old wanted chicken fingers with fries and fruit.

Without exception, all three girls ate the fruit first. It was a nice melon salad: cantalope and honeydew. I think there might have been some kind of red fruit in there, watermelon or grapes perhaps, but they disappeared before I could identify them. Our two-year-old demolished her chicken fingers and fries as well as some of my tomatoes and tortilla chips from my husband. Our five-year-old ate all of her fruit one slice of pizza, the bun from her friend's hot dog, one of my pieces of bread, and the few remaining fries on her sister's plate. Our guest ate all the fruit and about a third of everything else on her plate, having inhaled her tall glass of orange juice before her food even arrived.

And then the kids decamped for the play area, leaving my husband and I to eat in glorious peace. I loved the curried chicken salad, slightly crunchy with walnuts and slightly sweetened by raisins. The mesclun salad was also wonderfully fresh - I am very picky about my mesclun, and these were good, fresh greens, if slightly overdressed. The salad was accompanied by two small slices of baguette, claimed by my elder daughter.

My husbands huevos rancheros consisted of two eggs over easy topped with salsa, a link of chorizo sliced in half lengthwise and grilled, a serving of black beans, homemade flour tortilla chips that he loved, and sour cream. I tried the chorizo and liked it a lot. The spiciness crept up on me and hit the back of my throat well after I'd swallowed. It went well with the lemonade.

The service, which I had remembered as being lackluster, was right on today: cheerful, responsive, competent. The kids had a great time, we had a great meal, and it was all reasonably priced. I can't wait to go back.

EDIT: Restaurant ratings:

4 smileys for good service and great kid space

4 carrots for healthy food

2 moos for moderate price

The Challenge of Dining with Small Children

If you live in the Boston area and have small children - and by this I mean children too young to reliably sit still and not throw food at each other and you - you may be experiencing the problem I have: finding good restaurants where both you and your children enjoy eating. I've found that many so-called children's restaurants (Friendly's, Chuck E. Cheese, etc.) have miserable food for both the kids and the adults, and most restaurants with food I like eating lack either good kid's menus, a comfortable, kid-friendly environment, or amenable service. Having found two good restaurants in the past week, I've decided to start up yet another blog so that I can share them with the local Boston community.

I will use the following rating system:

• Smileys: These indicate how kid-friendly the restaurant is, including service and play space, if any.
  
• Carrots: These indicate how healthy the kid's menu offerings are. Bonus points for local food.
• Moos: Short for moolah, these indicate how expensive the food was.

In all cases, one = worst and five=best.

Now, on with the reviews!