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