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.