pittsburgh restaurants, toddler-friendly

Restaurants in Pittsburgh are generally pretty bad, but there are a few that defy that tendency. So the wife and I--restaurant people both, having lived in blue-state kinda places like LA, NYC, Portland, Minneapolis, Austin, etc., where the restaurant standards are high--were brainstorming the other day about good restaurants--those to which we could take out of towners without feeling like we had to tender explanations ("um, yes, the french fries and cole slaw go on the sandwich; yes the french fries also go on the salad"). We came up with a partial list, and as we have a toddler we categorize everything by how toddler-friendly it is:

Point Brugges in Point Breeze: very good Belgian food including mussels and crispy fries, slow service.

Enrico's in the Strip: great Italian food, but only open Saturdays and there are very few, very small tables.

Old Europe on the South Side: heavy Eastern European food; pretty fast service, big tables, fishtank for entertainment.

Tram's Kitchen in Friendship/Garfield: the best pho in town, little English spoken (although I think Mr Le speaks fluent
French as well as, of course, Vietnamese), owner who is very charming with little kids.

Green Mango in Edgewood: takeout only, but good Thai.

Typhoon in Shadyside: fancy nouveau Thai. I wouldn't take the boy.

Trilogy: excellent downtown restaurant, but probably not kid-friendly.

The Church brewpub in Bloomfield/Friendship: nice big room (room? it's a deconsecrated church!), fantastic pizza, pretty good beer. Quick service. With a toddler, get the corner booth tables. Under no circumstances order the vegetarian wrap.

Abay in East Liberty: adequate Ethiopian. Fresh-tasting but with almost no spice. Makes me wonder how one can get the fare authentic-ized. But the remarkably mild food is quite amenable to toddlers.

Kassab's on the South Side: good Lebanese/Middle Eastern, good for kids.

Cafe du Jour on the South Side: good, creative bistro food. Not a place for a two-year-old.

Cafe Zinho in Shadyside: great little place in a cute corner of Shadyside, across from a tile store. Especially pretty in the summer. "Romantic" place, so not a toddler joint.

La Feria in Shadyside: tiny Peruvian place on Walnut. Excellent ropa vieja. A nice place for a little one unless your little one is barely under control--there are a lot of small, fragile, brightly colored objects within arm's reach.

Hot Metal Grille on the South Side: it tries to be a businessman's lunch place, but I don't think there are enough businessmen in that part of the South Side, so I've never seen it all that crowded. It's good, not great. Manly. Not so kid-friendly.

Sharp Edge in East Liberty/Friendship: a beer-snob bar with pretty damn good food--Belgian-influenced. Why are two of the best restaurants in this town Belgian?

What's missing here? Mexican. There's no Mexican I'd recommend in Pittsburgh. The Taco Loco, late of 17th and Carson and now relocated, had pretty good tacos (chilango style) but was quite overpriced--to the degree that we just didn't go back. There was a taqueria on Murray Ave. in Squirrel Hill, that was good, but just overpriced enough that we haven't gone back. (We've stopped going out to eat in Squirrel Hill after realizing that everything--Cucina Flegrea, Mineo's, Pamela's, etc.--is okay but not as good as it probably should be.) Cozumel in Shadyside was much like El Coyote on Beverly in Los Angeles: that's all I'm going to say. There was a place--El Campesino maybe it's called?--with several locations, the one in Monroeville was the one we hit--that was also pretty below average. La Fiesta in Oakland is probably the best, but the regular menu items are unremarkable; the only reason I know they can perform is that I went to a function there geared at Spanish speakers and the food was extremely good. I know there's a place downtown but I haven't tried it yet. And I'm not going to bother with Mad Mex.

Because of this--not exclusively because of this, but in surprisingly large part of this--we are out of town this coming week for ten days in Guanajuato, Mexico. I sometimes lull myself to sleep thinking about it... chilaquiles, tamales, tacos al pastor, tortas de quesillo, jalapeños y zanahorias en escabeche, micheladas, sangrita, helado de tamarindo... unfortunately I won't have access to the world's greatest tacos al pastor, which are only served at one of two small stands outside of the first-class bus station in Oaxaca city, but I'm sure the fine guanajuatenses have good tacos of their own.