Sticky hands, temper tantrums, and picky eaters welcomed.
Dining in Portland with children can be a trying experience: Kids can be antsy, rambunctious, cranky, or simply picky eaters that refuse anything other than chicken fingers and grilled cheese. And it’s that much harder at a restaurant that doesn’t concern itself with accommodating kids or their parents. Luckily, there’s more than a few brewpubs, restaurants, and pizzerias that go out of their way to make family nights a joy, rather than a chore.
Below, you can find a list of the best children-friendly restaurants, but with a mind to quality, so that parents can enjoy their meal just as much as the kids do.
The bambino at Boke Bowl is a great introduction to the world of ramen.
Boke Bowl’s ramen honcho Patrick Fleming’s casual, crowd-pleasing menu of nontraditional ramen and rice bowls plays to a broad spectrum of diners, including the under-12 demographic. The industrial, design-savvy dining room offers plenty of space so that the more rambunctious little ones can roam without bumping into too many elbows; once seated, they can dig into the bambino or bambino bowl, aided by plastic starter chopsticks sets shaped like scowling ninjas. Kid-size versions of the main attractions, the bambino is a ramen bowl with noodles, broth, veggies, and a choice between pork or caramelized fennel, while the bambino bowl is a rice bowl with vegetables and a choice of protein. For dessert, the miso butterscotch “twinkies” are sure to be a hit with kids, parents, and everyone else.
A new addition to downtown’s dining scene, Buranko has plenty for kids to love.
Relatively new to Portland and primarily catering to downtown workers on their lunch break, Buranko features a range of pan-Asian picks: Korean chicken rice bowls, soft-shell crab pad thai, galbi, and orange chicken crowd the menu next to cocktails and an array of teas. The eclectic lineup all but ensures that even choosier sprats will find something to enjoy. While parents recline in the basket chairs or at the long communal tables, kids can toddle through the shoe-free play area, filled with kids books, a small table with toy trains, and cubbies full of stuffed animals and games.
Carefully curated toppings star at Eb & Bean, a soft-serve frozen yogurt pioneer that features the milk of happy co-op cows, plant-based froyo options, and blackboard shout-outs to local purveyors. Gluten-free and vegan alternatives abound, so even discerning eaters and diet-restricted kids can go full-bore with the candy garnishes, like dye-free sprinkles, organic gummy bears, and vegan, gluten-free cookie dough. But the tykes don’t have a monopoly on fun here thanks to more grown-up flavors like Meyer lemon crème fraîche frozen yogurt, oat streusel toppings, and cold brew bourbon sauce. Each of the Eb & Bean locations is decked in bright pastels and adorable portraits of the shops’ mascot, a friendly polar bear in a beanie. Come summertime, catch a steady stream of families swarming for sweets.
This east-side strip mall hall has maintained its dim sum crown for decades thanks to its many rattling carts that leave pork-and-ginger perfume contrails in their wake. Daily, families fill the palatial, retro dining room, loading the circular tables with all manner of Cantonese staples, plump pork-and-shrimp siu mai and cloud-soft bao that erupt with steam when ripped apart. Kids can graze at this hectic brunch utopia for hours and never get bored. Once you’ve sampled through the savory treats, snag an order of egg yolk buns—a yeasty mind-scrambler hiding a drippy trove of hot, sweet golden goo inside. They are round, sugar-crusted, and usually in the bottom left-hand corner of the glass-doored carts. Find them.
It may not be Portland’s trendiest brewery, but Hopworks’ Southeast location reminds us why brewpubs make such a family-friendly locale. While the grown-ups nurse IPAs and chocolate stouts, kiddos can hang out at the play area with the wooden train sets or color with crayons. HUB also provides a juvenilized take on classic pub grub: find mini pizzas, burgers, chicken tenders, and grilled cheese. On Wednesdays, each item is just $5 for kids 12 and under.
The green-walled playroom at Mother’s provides a welcome distraction for little ones.
Who better to prepare a child-friendly meal than Mother herself? Cookbook author and comfort-food matriarch Lisa Schroeder serves all the classics mom used to make—that is, if your mom put smoked salmon and caramelized onions in the mac and cheese. She even shares her motherly love with a “Mother of the Month” menu, with special dishes from cooks who earned their stripes the hard way: raising children. The raucous Sunday brunch is known for its rich portobello mushroom scramble and cornflake-crusted challah French toast—fun for the kiddies, but sophisticated enough for adults. Tykes have a small playroom and their own extensive menu filled with sliced fruit, oatmeal, mac and cheese, smaller portions of meatier entrées, and, naturally, a grilled cheese sandwich.
The mini doughnuts at Pip’s are the perfect size for tiny hands.
Crisp, fried-to-order mini doughnuts make Pip’s a cult favorite for sweets-craving locals. Tiny hands love tiny doughnuts, and grown-ups love the lava-hot little treats just as much, whether sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, slathered with Nutella, or topped with candied bacon. But the café’s sleeper hit is its roster of deftly spiced chai teas. Co-owner Jamie Snell trundles in cartloads of cinnamon sticks, chamomile buds, and tobacco-sweet black cardamom pods to marry with Indian, Chinese, and Thai teas and steamed milk. Her bold creations are a love match with sea salt and honey-drizzled doughnuts, but for kiddos after a classic, there’s always hot chocolate. While waiting for the milk to steam, children can peruse the shelf full of vintage kids books or pose for photos in front of the café’s Oregon state flag.
In a former neighborhood bar on the edge of Cully, Bunk Sandwiches’ Tommy Habetz has remixed the family pizza parlor for a new generation—punk rock, Sichuan chile oil, and a four-player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game included. You can order a first-rate pepperoni, build your own meat and/or veggie-packed pie, or bliss out on the expansive vegan offerings. In the winter, kids compete for high scores at the arcade machines, but come summer, they’ll be running around the backyard garden play area and taking down Dairy Queen–style soft serve.
Slappy Cakes provides a plethora of pancake garnishes.
Fry your own pancakes on a tabletop grill? With kids? Sounds like a lawsuit in the making. But Slappy Cakes might be Portland’s most kid-approved restaurant, slam-packed with weekend crowds griddling their own buttermilk and chocolate pancakes and liberally topping them with a plethora of sweet and savory goodies. Don’t feel like risking a hot surface? Slappy Cakes also provides plenty of menu items, including pancakes from the kitchen and an all-day breakfast selection beyond flapjacks.
Choo-choo! Here comes the sushi train. Destination: deliciousness! That’s the sentiment at Old Town’s iconic Sushi Ichiban. For years, it’s been one of the city’s most affordable spots for California rolls and unagi, as color-coded plates make their rotation around the conveyor-belt-turned-toy-train-track, waiting to be grabbed up by tiny-fingered hands. Beyond the lovable locomotive, the low price point is what makes Ichiban shine for outings with kids; with few rolls over $5, they can explore the colorful world of maki and nigiri in a low-stakes way, without breaking the bank. You can save the expensive omakase experience for when they’re old enough to appreciate it.
The busy Tin Shed Garden Cafe is an Alberta Street institution.
When deciding on where to take the whole family for brunch or weekday lunch, it’s wise to consider the space: Will there be enough room for an antsy toddler or preteen to wander around without getting in the way? The servers at this Alberta Street institution are adept at avoiding ankle biters, expertly maneuvering to deliver platters of omelets and veggie scrambles. Tin Shed remains a popular family destination not just for its kids menu (think cheesy eggs and biscuits, French toast, and grilled cheese) and general friendliness, but also for its pup-friendly patio and dog menu (really) that ensures no one in the family gets left out.
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