Restaurants up ante on fare for young patrons

It’s the Holy Grail of eating out as a family — a kids’ menu with something other than chicken fingers, hamburgers, french fries — a kids’ menu with food that kids want to eat and adults want them to eat.

A local movement has been building slowly, though, to add interesting and healthy items for restaurants’ youngest customers.

“The worst food on the menu was always on the kids’ menu,” said Diane Schmidt, a Chicago mom with a public health background who suffered through a decade of bad kids’ meals with her daughter. “I got this idea to try to change it.”

Schmidt teamed up with nutritionist Carol Wagner and chef Sarah Stegner of Prairie Grass Cafe in Northbrook to start the Healthy Fare for Kids program in December 2011. They asked local restaurants to add and identify at least one nutritionally sound item on their kids’ menus. Since then, more than 50 restaurants have signed on.

For two-time James Beard Award-winner Stegner, offering something more than a pint-sized portion of fried chicken at her restaurant, known for its seasonal fare, was a no-brainer

“When we opened the restaurant I wanted something that kids really liked that matched the rest of the food,” Stegner said. “It needed to go with the restaurant.”

While a recent survey from the Center for Science in the Public Interest concluded that 97 percent of chain restaurant kids’ meals failed to meet basic nutrition standards, chef-driven restaurants have been open to the Healthy Fare message, said Stegner, a two-time James Beard Award winner.

“If you don’t ever put the vegetable in front of [kids] they are never going to eat it,” she said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Parents aren’t only looking for healthy food, they want something fun and interesting. Terry Park, manager of TTOWA Korean restaurant in Arlington Heights, started a children’s menu two months ago after customers repeatedly requested it.

“Usually fried rice is just bean sprouts and rice,” he said. “We use shiitake mushrooms, zucchini, carrots, lots of chives, just trying to make it a little bit healthier.”