Restaurants

Leffe Best New Restaurant | Best Gastropub | Best British Restaurant | Best Family Restaurant | Best Local Restaurant | Best Cheap Eats | Best Bar | Best Design | Best Traiteur | Best Coffee Bar

Best Family Restaurant

Tate Modern Café

WINNER
Tate Modern Café
Super-efficient waiters soon put you at ease here, tempering what might be a slightly austere venue: a large, clattery space clad in shiny black and plate-glass. Children especially are greeted with much enthusiasm. The kids’ menu (handed out with a pot of wax crayons, and including art and literacy activities) offers haddock goujons, spaghetti and meatballs or pasta and tomato bake, with a choice of drink and an ice-cream or fruit pudding. Or they can order half-price mains from the adult menu. This features some inspirational light lunches; our favourite was the vivid vegetarian meze plate (houmous and beetroot dips, goat’s cheese, lentils, roasted vegetables and grilled flatbread). Alternatives range from snacks such as potted devilled crab to mains like grilled polenta with wild mushrooms, spinach and parmesan. Feature continues

You can also get breakfast (organic muffins, sausage ciabatta), afternoon tea and, on Tate Modern’s late-closing nights, dinner (roasted salmon, say, with cauliflower champ and asparagus). It’s all about quality (the fish is from Newlyn, the ice-cream is Roskilly’s) over quantity, always a good idea, especially where kids are concerned. The knickerbocker glory was a mini-masterpiece of vanilla ice-cream, berry jelly and chocolate and raspberry sauces.
Tate Modern Café, Second floor, Tate Modern, Sumner St, SE1 9TG (020 7401 5014) Southwark tube.

RUNNERS-UP
Mudchute Kitchen
A farm fenced in by skyscrapers has obvious appeal for London’s families. Across the yard from the squealing Gloucester Old Spots and clucking Polish White-Crests sits the farmyard kitchen. The tireless young chefs are not apple-cheeked farmers’ wives but they certainly know about wholesome seasonal grub and make lashings of sparkling ginger beer. There’s a big futon for babies to roll about on, a book and toy corner and information boards outlining the history of the Isle of Dogs. The bucolic location has its disadvantages – there are flies – but these are soon forgotten when you taste the food: usually four or five hot options (available in child-priced portions for about £3), simple things (home-laid eggs, own-made jam) on toast, and great cakes.
Mudchute Kitchen, Mudchute Park and Farm, Isle of Dogs, E14 3HP (020 7515 5901) Mudchute DLR.

Munchkin Lane
You don’t have to be toting a tot to come here – the smart upstairs area is a great for coffees, smoothies and light lunches whatever your age – but it’s good to know that the basement, with its toys, chalkboards, Disney screen classics and sweet play den is especially for young children. There are plenty of tables below stairs, so that families can decide to eat in the playroom if the children so wish. The food is a happy fusion of sweet treats and wholesome organics. Kids can choose from a range of nursery favourites – shepherd’s pie, organic fish pie, macaroni cheese or sandwiches – and will enjoy dunking own-made gingerbread men into big cups of kiddiechino.
Munchkin Lane, 83 Nightingale Lane, SW12 8NX (020 8772 6800) Clapham South tube/Wandsworth Common rail.

Pick More Daisies
A friendly Californian-style diner, where family groups make up much of the daytime clientele and toddlers can toddle with impunity. Pick More Daisies’ gourmet burgers are the business: chunky, juicy, and made with prime Charolais beef steak, or, in the case of the Yummy Mummy burger, prime Kobe beef. They come between two blankets of arctic flatbread, rather like quilted pitta. Vegetarian (black bean) and marinated chicken variations are also grand. The children’s menu is pleasing, with peanut butter and jelly grilled sandwiches, stacks of pancakes and baked macaroni cheese. All-day breakfasts include ‘green eggs and ham’ (the green comes from basil oil) – presented like everything else here with care and a sense of fun.
Pick More Daisies, 12 Crouch End Hill, N8 8AA (020 8340 2288/www.pickmoredaisies.com) Crouch Hill rail/W3 or W7 bus.

Raviolo
Despite its rather sophisticated looks, Raviolo is a fine family restaurant as well as a lovely local. Children have high chairs and boxes of toys at their disposal, and their own menu lists dishes in the comfort zone (spag-bol penne with tomato sauce, meat lasagne) as well as more adventurous suggestions, such as spinach and ricotta ravioli, baked mushroom crêpes, or a sampling plate like the adult one (comprising wonderful wild mushroom risotto, some delicious meatballs and a pile of creamy mozzarella with sage). It’s good food, served small, which is what every child’s menu should be, and worth a south-westerly train trip.
Raviolo, 1 Balham Station Rd, SW12 9SG (020 8772 0433/www.raviolo.co.uk) Balham tube/rail.

Leffe Best New Restaurant | Best Gastropub | Best British Restaurant | Best Family Restaurant | Best Local Restaurant | Best Cheap Eats | Best Bar | Best Design | Best Traiteur | Best Coffee Bar