Montlake Ale House

Lots of places around Seattle tag themselves as "kid-friendly" when you do a web search or use an app like UrbanSpoon to find what's around you.  Montlake Ale House delivers on the kid friendly with a kid pit.

They don't bill themselves as a "sports bar", but they do have a lot of tv's.  We got there at 5:00, to meet up with Jeremy & Jenny, and their son (and Z's best buddy), Finley.  The restaurant area is on two levels, with tv's all around.  The upper area in the back has the kid pit, and a semi-circular balcony with seating surrounding the pit.  There's also a big alcove set of tables, and a few other tables in this area as well. 

Baby thunderdome. Two kids enter, one kid leaves.

The back alcove was completely overrun by what appeared to be a PEPS (peer early parenting support) group with around 2-3 month old babies.  Playoff game of some sort had gone into overtime, as evidenced by the dads in the PEPS group making halfhearted attempts at performing the 5 S's while watching the game on one of the tv's.  The dads were standing, swaying, and SHHHHHing, punctuated with cheers and groans in reaction to the game: "SHHHHHHHHHHHHH YEAH!!!!! SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

We ended up a little scrunched at a table for 4, Finley took the booster seat in the middle of the bench seat, and we put Z in a high chair at the end of the table.  The first high chair the waitress brought us had a broken buckle, which she put back in rotation and then provided a working chair.

Here's an aside......

Dear Restaurant owners and staff:  If you have equipment that is broken or filthy, don't put it back for the next family to pick up and say "hey, this is broken or filthy".  Take it out of rotation, fix it/clean it and then put it back in rotation.  It's not going to fix itself.  Even if you don't have time to take care of it right that moment, or it's "not your job", make a note of it so it gets addressed.  Us people with babies look for your help in maintaining a safe environment.  And while I've got your attention?  Don't pour refills of hot coffee or pass scalding hot plates over top my child's head.  Sincerely yours, Mama with common sense.

OK. Back to Montlake Ale House. The children's menu has some nice options.  There are  fruits, veggies, and not everything is fried, which is more than I'd hope for on a standard pub fare menu.  The portions are also QUITE generous.  Z had the mac and cheese and a cup of milk.  He was absolutely OVERJOYED that the brought the milk in a short paper coffee cup, with the tented coffee cup lid you get at pretty much every coffee shop.  They shoved a straw in the drink hole (Which is not exactly water tight, as we discovered when Finley tipped his glass of water up to take a big drink).  For some reason Z is fascinated with that style of cup, and we do spend many a weekend morning playing "hide Daddy's coffee cup so Zachary won't grab it and spill coffee everywhere"

Kids menu

The kids menu had a nice picture and word puzzle that could be colored, however no crayons on the table.  Not a big deal for us, Z eats the crayons, and Finley was more interested in his Mama's iPad and "Rangee Birds".

 

Jenny & I both had spicy chicken salads, Mark had fish and chips and Jeremy had a quesadilla.  There was also an order of scrumptious sweet potato fries for the table.  As expected at a pub, they do have a good beer selection, both on tap and in bottles.  They also kindly arrange the beers from lightest to darkest on the menu for those of us (me) who don't really like/drink beer on a regular basis.

The food was prompt and the server brought extra napkins unprompted, which is a sign of a certain familiarity with a table with kids to me.  It never ceases to amaze me how many servers will plop a hot dish of food down in front of a 14 month old, and then give me a look when I immediately take it away from his reach.  I bogarted Z's bowl of mac and cheese to prep it, while he looked at me like I'd just kicked his favorite monkey, and possibly run over his cat.

Mac & Cheese!  Big portion!

As I started in on my typical cut-things-up-smaller-than-I-need-to routine, Jenny said "you know, he could probably handle a whole noodle."  Mark and I looked at each other, then looked at Z.  I couldn't bring myself to hand over a whole noodle for fear of catastrophic results, but I did concede the point to a more-experienced Mama and I cut a couple noodles in half, instead of into 6 pieces like I had started with.  Z picked up the half noodle, bit half of it off, and proceeded with no trouble.  I cut several more noodles in half for him, then gave him a pile to work on while I dug into my salad.  BONUS!  MY FOOD WAS STILL WARM!  Thank you, Jenny!

The adults all enjoyed their food, Z enjoyed his noodles, Finley ate like he always does (which is to say 'not much', and punctuated with spells where he needs to move around or do something different before he's ready for the next bite) and the game ended while we were eating.  Most of the PEPS group cleared out, and we got to our real reason for picking Montlake Ale House in the first place.  THE KID PIT.

Zac, Finley, & Mark check out the goods

It's three small steps down, and the floor is covered with an all purpose green carpet that has pretty smushy padding underneath it.  The chair legs you see is a horseshoe shaped seating area, where parents can enjoy their food/beer while watching their kids play.  There's a pretty good variety of duplo blocks, books, car toys, and other random stuff.  I didn't notice any immediate choking hazards, although I did blanch when Z brought one of the blocks to his mouth for a gnaw.  Mark reassured me that they must sterilize the toys on a regular basis, after all, they have a dishwasher machine.  I tried not to shudder and tried hard to believe him.

There was one older boy in the pit who was being a bit of a snot about the duplo blocks.  It's not that he needed them all to build what he was making, he was just interested in no one else having any blocks.  His parents were not super attentive to the situation, so we kept directing Z and Fin to other toys to avoid a scene. 

Mama's little Shoe-dini lost a sock immediately

 Fin seemed to be possessed by an urge to feng shui the kid pit and kept rearranging toys in different piles.  Then he got the idea of "put Zackie in the bucket"  This brought the block hogger over to see what we were doing.

Baby in a bucket!

Fin was going to try and push Z around in the bucket, then the physics of  just 1 pound difference between the two boys sunk in, and I pushed Z in the bucket while Z and Fin made VROOM VROOM sounds and giggled.

The bathroom has two stalls, one good sized handicapped stall with changing station.  (no station in men's.  Do I have to start a petition?!?!?)  The bathroom was freezing cold, and not super clean - it wasn't filthy, it was just messy - stinky diapers in an open garbage can by the changing station, lots of paper on the floor and water on the counter top.

The place was really empty, so our server did not pressure us to pay up, or to clear our table.  She also didn't really seem to care that much that we were still there - there was no check back, how are things, etc.  Another thing that was a little strange around the service - they didn't have enough menus, even though the place was less than half full the entire time we were there.  It was odd to have to share.

Baby Rating: 4 out of 4 big boy penne noodles

Mama Rating: 4 out of 4 big boy penne noodles

Service: 2 out of 4 big boy penne noodles - we placed our order, we got our food.

Healthy/kid friendly: 3 out of 4 big boy penne noodles - for a pub, I should probably give it 4.  Maybe I'll just never find that elusive 4th noodle in this category.

Uh-Oh! Diaper!: 1 changing table in the ladies room, stashed in the handicap stall.  Decent sized space, but did not seem to be well maintained by staff.  Kinda dirty.

Overall: 81%

Likelihood of returning: Kid thunderdome and beer.  It makes for a fun hour!  The food is tasty, too.  High likelihood of returning, but might check the sports schedule first next time.