March 2008   View Previous Eating Out Articles 

Max & Erma’s Restaurant

  What’s on the menu: For kids, there are more than half a dozen choices with typical kids fare, like chicken strips, pizza, macaroni and cheese, and corndogs for $3.99. Side items for kids include fresh fruit cup – with a heaping amount of grapes, strawberries, pineapple and cantaloupe – steamed broccoli or french fries. Salads, burgers and sandwiches along with vegetarian fare, juicy steaks and seafood top the menu for adults. Combinations of soup, sandwiches and salads are available any time to please even the pickiest eaters.

  Why your kids will like it: Select any of the numerous kids-meal choices and the kids will say they love their meal because it’s “yummy.” Kids like the cool drink choices, like root beer in a bottle, watermelon lemonade and fancier drinks, like Beetlejuice, which is grape juice and sprite mixed together and topped with a gummy worm. But most kids are already eyeing the restaurant’s ice cream sundae bar, with all the fixin’s, including the kid-pleasing raspberry whipped topping, arranged in an old bathtub.

  Why parents will like it: The menu says kids must clean their plates to indulge in the ice cream sundae bar, so it’s the restaurant’s rule, not yours. The wait staff won’t make your kids clean their plates to have ice cream, but kids are much more cooperative knowing they have to in order to earn their frozen reward. The restaurant has lots of open space, so families won’t feel crowded in the dining room. The prices, including the $1.29 ice cream sundae bar, are reasonable.

– Tiffany Capuano