Ask RiotACT: child friendly restaurants in Canberra?

First Edition Restaurant is a child-friendly family restaurant that regularly hosts kiddie events such as the Kids High Tea. Families can enjoy a wide range of dishes made from locally sourced produce. There’s a kids menu specially made for the little ones.

First Edition is located at the Novotel Hotel. For more information, please visit: https://www.firsteditioncanberra.com.au/child-friendly-family-restaurant-in-canberra/

Welcome to Canberra. We did the same move from Melbourne to Canberra 2 years ago. Canberra is very family friendly in general…

I second the recommendation about the Yarralumla Yacht Club fish and chips – my girls (similar ages to your kids) love going there when the weather is nice.

Kusina in Weston Creek (at the Cooleman Court shopping centre) is fantastic for kids – they have colouring in for the kids and a children’s menu with smaller serves of child friendly food like chicken skewers.

I often take my girls to Chinese Kitchen Dumpling House at the Woden Plaza for lunch – doesn’t look particularly child friendly, but they will quickly bring out the plastic dishes when they see you with young children so you don’t have to worry about breakages, the food comes out quickly so the little darlings have less time to get bored and fractious, and they don’t really mind if the kids are a bit loud – particularly if you are sitting in the outdoor section.

Also, we go to the local club a fair bit as they have child friendly food and a play area, which my girls love.

Dorothy Wilkinson said :

Hi All. Thank you for your recommendations. I’ll definitely need to check out some of these spots.

Chris Mordd Richards said :

Can you define “child friendly” please. I think this might mean wildly different things to different people.

By child friendly I mean somewhere that young children regularly frequent. I don’t want to ruin fellow a diners meal if children aren’t usually part of the scenery. I do get worried when I go to places that don’t have a children’s menu – normally the sign I’m in the wrong place!

I do like places that have play areas. However in Melbourne there are a lot of restaurants that do simple things – like have butchers paper as the table cloth – and have tins of pencils that children can draw with.

Fair enough, thanks for clarifying, that sounds very reasonable. Just wondered if you meant by child friendly “ok to make a big mess and not expect staff to be unhappy about that” or some other slightly more unrealistic expectation of child friendly. 🙂

Hi All. Thank you for your recommendations. I’ll definitely need to check out some of these spots.

Chris Mordd Richards said :

Can you define “child friendly” please. I think this might mean wildly different things to different people.

By child friendly I mean somewhere that young children regularly frequent. I don’t want to ruin fellow a diners meal if children aren’t usually part of the scenery. I do get worried when I go to places that don’t have a children’s menu – normally the sign I’m in the wrong place!

I do like places that have play areas. However in Melbourne there are a lot of restaurants that do simple things – like have butchers paper as the table cloth – and have tins of pencils that children can draw with.

Most of the sports clubs have a play area for kids – Vikings Erindale, Southern cross club Woden and raiders club in Kippax are among the best play areas standard club fare
Café Injoy in gold creek, the café at Pillago and Rose cottage in Chisholm are good for lunch/brunch with kids areas.
Fish and chips at the yacht club and the café at Weston park in Yarralumla is good for kids to run around.
But it really depends on what you want for the kids.

Can you define “child friendly” please. I think this might mean wildly different things to different people.

All depends what you are after. My definition of kid-friendly is generally cheap and not very popular so it doesn’t matter if you make a mess and a lot of noise. For this reason we went to Kinh Do Vietnamese at Macquarie for many years.

Now that the kids are slightly older we like places where we can sit outside and let them run around if they must. Tilleys in Lyneham is good for this – and it’s never super busy. However it’s not cheap… Burgers, curries and fish and chips all over $20.

Are you after places suited for the kids, or suited for the family? This time of year it is lovely to picnic outside the Yarralumla Yacht Club and enjoy fish and chips from Snapper on the Lake. Lots of space for kids to run around. http://www.cscc.com.au/snapper

Kingsland in Dickson is a great family environment.

I’m glad this was posted. Now I know which restaurants to avoid.