Kid friendly restaurants in San Francisco

Original Joe's

A red-leather, white-tablecloth Italian-American dining room that has been run by the same family since the 1930s, sitting across from Washington Square Park. The booths are wide enough to take a high chair without anyone minding, the open exhibition kitchen gives a restless kid something to watch, and the portions are large enough that one order of ravioli or the house Joe's Special usually feeds two children. It is the most expensive of the everyday picks here, and weekend evenings fill up, so book ahead.

Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar

A tiki restaurant in the basement of the Fairmont Hotel, built around the hotel's old indoor swimming pool, where a band plays on a floating stage and an indoor rainstorm breaks about every fifteen minutes. Children are welcome before 10 p.m. and the kitchen runs a Polynesian menu of pork belly bites and kalua pork sliders, with layered blue-and-pink mocktails for the under-tens. Two catches worth knowing: there is a cover charge once the band starts at 7 p.m., and tables go about a week in advance on weekends.

Scoma's Restaurant

A third-generation seafood house sitting on a working pier at Fisherman's Wharf, with its own fish receiving station and windows onto the boats. The draw for families is the view and the old-school service: white-shirted waiters, free bread, and a children's menu of the beige things most kids will actually eat, from fish and chips to chicken tenders and mac and cheese. It is one of the pricier rooms on this list and squarely in tourist territory, so expect a wait at peak times; the restaurant validates parking in its own lot and a nearby overflow lot.

Boudin Bakery & Cafe at Fisherman's Wharf

The flagship of San Francisco's oldest sourdough bakery, where a glass-walled bakery floor lets children watch loaves being shaped and baked before anyone sits down to eat. Downstairs is a casual counter-service cafe built for exactly this: clam chowder in a bread bowl, sandwiches, pizzas and a published kids' menu, with no pressure to sit still for a whole course. It is the easiest stop on the Wharf with young children, and the cheapest of the three Wharf-area picks here; the trade-off is that it is busy and unmistakably a tourist destination.

Waterbar

A glassy seafood restaurant directly under the Bay Bridge, with two floor-to-ceiling cylindrical aquariums in the middle of the dining room that do the work of an aquarium visit. The bay view takes in ferries and the fire boat, there is a shaded patio for warm days, and the children's menu comes printed with crayons, a word search and a fish maze, plus shrimp cocktail, chicken tenders, cheese ravioli and an ice-cream sundae. This is a special-occasion price point rather than a weeknight one, and reviews are more mixed than the setting suggests.

Pier 23 Cafe

A weather-beaten waterfront shack a few piers north of the Ferry Building, family-run since 1985, whose big sunny back patio sits right on the bay. It is a favorite landing spot after the Exploratorium: the kids' menu runs to fish and chips, burgers, hot dogs and grilled cheese, crayons arrive in a Mason jar, and live music plays through much of the week. Parents are warned off happy hour, when the bar crowd takes over; the house fruit punch and the root beer floats are the usual peace offering.

Yank Sing (Stevenson St.)

A long-running Cantonese dim sum house where the food arrives on rolling carts, which means a hungry child sees BBQ pork buns, siu mai and chow fun within a minute of sitting down instead of waiting on a kitchen. The Stevenson Street room takes reservations, another advantage with small children, and has covered outdoor seating; the sister branch inside Rincon Center opens onto an atrium where kids can burn off energy between rounds. It is expensive for dim sum, and it closes mid-afternoon, so this is a lunch plan rather than a dinner one.

Rocket Sushi

Sushi and ramen ordered from a tablet at the table and delivered by a model rocket that runs along a track to your booth. The gimmick is the point with children: they punch in the order themselves, only a few dishes can be sent at a time, and the arrival of each plate is an event. The food itself is straightforward, well-made sushi, ramen and donburi at mid-range prices, and it has the highest customer rating of anywhere on this list. There is a mid-afternoon closure between lunch and dinner service.

Pica Pica Arepa Kitchen

A father-and-daughter Venezuelan counter on the corner of Valencia and 15th, where the signature dish is the arepa: a grilled corn pocket you fill and eat with your hands, which removes the cutlery problem entirely. Everything is naturally gluten-free, the online menu can be filtered by allergen, and there is a short kids' menu of chicken strips, cheese arepas and a sweet corn cachapa. Yuca fries and the cachapas tend to win over children who are suspicious of anything unfamiliar. It is fast and casual rather than a sit-down evening out.

Emmy's Spaghetti Shack

A small, loud, cheerfully scruffy pasta place on the Mission Street side of Bernal Heights that has been feeding neighborhood families since 2001. The kitchen leans into what children actually order: big mounds of spaghetti and meatballs, pesto for the ones who refuse red sauce, and eggplant parmesan for anyone avoiding pasta, while the adults get a proper wine and cocktail list. Children under 12 eat free on Tuesday evenings with an adult meal, which makes it the best-value night out here. It takes reservations and has only a handful of tables, so book.

Giorgio's Pizzeria

A 1972 Inner Richmond pizzeria with red vinyl booths, checked tablecloths and thin-crust pies that East Coast parents tend to describe as the pizza of their childhood. The kitchen also turns out calzones, pasta and parmigiana, and there is a slice window on the corner if nobody has the patience for a sit-down meal. It is the least fussy room on this list and among the cheapest, and the booths absorb noise well; the flip side is that it is a plain neighborhood pizzeria rather than an outing in itself.

Joe's Ice Cream & Burgers

A Geary Boulevard soda fountain that has been scooping its own ice cream since 1959 and now grills burgers alongside it, so dessert and dinner happen in the same room. Alongside rocky road and cookies and cream there are red bean, black sesame and Thai tea scoops, and the burger side runs from a plain cheeseburger to a bulgogi burger and gochujang fries. There is a small parklet out front, which is where most families end up. It is the cheapest entry here and a good end point after an afternoon in Golden Gate Park.

San Tung

The Inner Sunset's dry-fried chicken wing institution, sticky, sweet and messy enough that children generally forget they were bored. Plates come twelve wings at a time and most tables order more than one, alongside hand-pulled noodles, dumplings and green beans. The room is packed and loud, which is a feature if you are traveling with a toddler prone to a scene, and the prices are among the lowest here. Two warnings: there is often a queue, and it closes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays as well as mid-afternoon between services.

Fiorella (Sunset)

A neighborhood Italian on 9th Avenue, a block from Golden Gate Park, doing wood-fired pizza and pasta in a room roomy enough that a wandering four-year-old is nobody's crisis. Crayons and coloring pages arrive without asking, service moves quickly, and on Wednesdays the Sunset and Richmond branches run a kids-eat-free menu, which is the reason most local families time their visit for midweek. It is pitched a notch above a pizzeria on price, and it is popular, so an early sitting is the safer bet with small children.