Giraffe Restaurants

Giraffe is - drumroll - a real family friendly restaurant. I really enjoy taking my kids out to eat but get really dispirited by the poor offerings that generally make up kid-friendly places or the woeful attitude of 'proper' restaurants. So it comes as a great pleasure to be able to recommend somewhere kids can eat well and parents can also eat and drink well and feel (relatively) good about the food their children are eating.

...hotel, that they decamped to Giraffe every morning for something much more tasty and better value.

From lunchtime onwards there are lots more choices - and everything I've had tastes so good that it only gets harder to choose! There are starters for one or to share including Mezze plates of dips, salads and breads(£5.95) and with kebabs (£11.95), crispy prawns or chicken with dipping sauces (£4.95) and seasonal soups with garlic bread ... more

Giraffe is - drumroll - a real family friendly restaurant. I really enjoy taking my kids out to eat but get really dispirited by the poor offerings that generally make up kid-friendly places or the woeful attitude of 'proper' restaurants. So it comes as a great pleasure to be able to recommend somewhere kids can eat well and parents can also eat and drink well and feel (relatively) good about the food their children are eating.

Giraffe is a small franchise of London-based restaurants, with the same menus and broadly similar atmosphere and décor. There are currently 12 restaurants taking in the suburbs of Richmond, Chiswick and Muswell Hill and more central/tourist locales such as Marylebone, Kensingon High Street and Spitalfields. The most recent is a glass atrium building in front of the Royal Festival Hall and probably the most useful to visitors to London. There is also a branch airside in Terminal 1 Heathrow, which would be a great way to start a holiday.

They are open from 8.00am - 11.00pm Monday to Friday, and from 9.00am on weekends and Bank Holidays. The Heathrow branch is open from 5.30am - 9.30pm all week.

The style is intended to be Global Party - possibly a slightly-hippy and oh-so-clean Gap-style Global Party (especially given some of the venue locations) - but nonetheless this translates into light, bright décor with stylised jungle animals, world music, informal style and a fun atmosphere. In some of the venues there are headsets on the walls so you can listen to various world music CDS (also available to buy) which provides a great source of amusement for the children.

Another major point is that they are all exclusively non-smoking, which is a huge plus for me but I realise can be a problem for others - so its best to be warned in advance. Branches with outside tables were reasonably tolerant about allowing smoking outside, however I watched a couple being politely asked to refrain when a large group of children were seated near them.

The food can really only be described as eclectic. From opening time until 4.00pm, there is a choice of breakfast/brunch dishes including pancake stacks with banana, blueberries and maple syrup (£5.50), enormous quantity of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with toasted bagel (£7.50) and more regular but tasty brunch plates of cooked delights (£6.95) including bacon and sausage or without. There are also pastries, yoghurt with fruit and honey or even toast with jam and marmite - something for everyone. There are newspapers to read and the service is swift and attentive. Friends staying near to the Marylebone venue were so aghast at the prices charged for breakfast in their hotel, that they decamped to Giraffe every morning for something much more tasty and better value.

From lunchtime onwards there are lots more choices - and everything I've had tastes so good that it only gets harder to choose! There are starters for one or to share including Mezze plates of dips, salads and breads(£5.95) and with kebabs (£11.95), crispy prawns or chicken with dipping sauces (£4.95) and seasonal soups with garlic bread (£3.95).

The main courses centre on a choice of 'burgers' and a short list of main 'plates'. Following, or possibly creating, the current trend and backlash against the plastic chains, this is proper meat, grilled to order and served on focaccia or brioche buns (£8.95). The beef-burger is 100% chopped Aberdeen Angus served with trimmings and fries, and very possibly my husband's death-row meal if it were ever to come to that. Other offerings include Falafel burger, Pesto Chicken Burger actually a large piece of lean chicken breast not minced, spread with pesto and rocket, and Chicken and Chorizo burger as above with chorizo and melted cheese - not a good idea on a first date but heavenly when its cold and raining outside. There is also an 'Oz' Lamburger which somehow I've never been interested in trying - chargrilled lamb with a fried egg, beetroot red and yellow and grilled pineapple anyone?!

Other main courses include Chicken and Squash thai curry(£8.95, Firecracker chicken noodles (£8.96) and a selection of burritos, enchiladas and tostadas(£7.95-£9.95). Everything comes with at least one side and a garnish but there are side dishes including salads, addictive apple and chipotle (smoked jalepeno pepper) coleslaw, breads and potato wedges and chips from about £1.75 to £3.50.
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Main course salads look very tempting and very large - you can choose either a house salad or a caesar salad (£6.95) and add extras such as grilled chicken, salmon or grilled halloumi for an extra £2-3.00 but didn't find a home on our table, I'm afraid.

Drinks offer the usual range of juices, soft drinks, coffee and teas and also premium beers, cocktails, smoothies and wine. Cocktails come in at around £6.00 but are generous and there are often deals which makes it easier to swallow (too much). Beers are priced around £3.00 and wine starts at about £12.00 for a very drinkable South African Chenin up to £20.00 for something that's probably even nicer. All the wines are also available by the glass starting at £3.20.

Giraffe puddings are about as near to heaven as my seven-year old can get right now. They include the likes of White Chocolate and toblerone cheesecake (£4.65), huge chocolate brownies with hot chocolate sauce and vanilla icecream (£4.50) and apple and rhubarb crumble with ginger icecream (£4.95) which they say is enough for two but not if the one eating it is my husband! There are also excellent Hill Station icecreams and sorbets from around £2-£3.96.

And what about the children?

I'm not a great fan of kids' menus - all the trimmings of balloons and colouring books so often go to disguise rather lack-lustre food and I'd prefer my children not to get into the idea of there being kids food and grown-up food, or good food and bad food for that matter. But the Giraffe menu hits some kind of compromise - true many of the meal choices come with chips (albeit with their skins on - so much healthier that way, ahem!) but you can always ask for vegetables, salad or mashed potato if you wish.

I should add at this point that I asked for vegetables with my son's fish and he spent a great deal of the mealtime stealthily removing chips from the rest of the party's plates to recover his due!

Kids food is basically a selection of small versions of the main menu at around £4.50 and has choices such as chicken, steak or falafel burgers, noodles with tomato sauce, salmon fingers and broccoli and grilled chicken. They also have scrambled egg or baked beans on toast - great for when you don't want to try too hard. These are followed predictably by icecream, brownies etc and accompanied by juice, smoothies or fizzy drinks if they've been really good.

The staff are well trained, attentive and basically do their job. They are careful to sit families and big groups apart from couples and adult-only groups if space permits. They are very quick to attend to finished dishes, atuned to bringing children's food before adults and furnishing drawing equipment and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of plastic giraffes.

Its not particularly cheap - expect to pay around £15-20 per head for adults, more if you drink much. However there are various deals available mostly Mon-Fri not including Bank Holidays. These include 2 for 1 drinks 5.00-700pm, children's meal £5.50 (main course, drink and pudding) from 12.00-3.00pm and Giraffe Time where you can get an 'appetizer' and main course from a limited selection for £6.95 from 5.00-7.00pm or £8.95 afterwards. In addition the restaurants are often running their own specials - we got free side dishes with two main courses in one, and a free (lethal) third cocktail in another.

Its worth logging onto their website at www.giraffe.net for information on menus, locations and to sign up for deals such as vouchers 2 for 1 burgers. You can also arrange a special party with a downloadable party pack for 15 people or more, prices start at £14.95 per head without drinks.

In 2005, Giraffe won 'best for kids' in THE OBSERVER FOOD AWARDS because it absolutely is a family-friendly restaurant that people without kids like too. It gets rave reviews from Time Out and Hardens for the food alone, as well as in the family section. But most importantly the food is good and people are happy,
 

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