Favorite Restaurant As A Kid

I'd have to say that my childhood restaurant of choice was In N Out. That's still somewhat the case today because the burgers are still pretty good. I'm spoiled living in Southern California with incredible food and plenty of incredible fast food chains that are exclusive to the Western US.

 

If we had a McDonalds, it would definitely have been it. But Botswana doesn't have it. I loved Wimpy, which has all but disappeared in the UK. Wimpy continues to grow and thrive in Southern Africa, and I still occasionally eat there. It's not bad at all. In fact, I think it's improved over time.

 

A lot of the same restaurants I liked as a kid like KFC and Pizza Hut are still around although I think the quality of both have degraded a bit over the decades. I still like eating at both, and I still like the food but I don't know if it's just that I remember differently or they really just went down in quality after more commercializations. I suppose both are equally possible and they probably both are.

 

Two of my favorites when I was a child were local, and it doesn't seem either is still around. Frascati's was a place my family and I would go for pizza, and it was so yummy, freshly made, with oodles of cheese, and just enough oil. Lum's was another favorite. It was sort of a fast food type restaurant, and I have no idea how extensive the menu was, because I always got the lobster roll. Neither was an expensive place, but I enjoyed the food, and spending time with my family.

 

I was not taken out to restaurants when I was a kid and McDonalds did not start until I was a teenager. There was a corner store near the school that we all get snacks from after school.

 

I have lots of favorites as a kid - in many cases, it was the restaurants in unusual locations that I loved the most - it wasn't always about the food itself, I just loved going on the road trip somewhere new with my folks.

One of the coolest we used to go to, I can't even remember the name of the place, but it was literally a cabin buried within the woods. It was about a 2 mile drive into a wooded area and the road only took you to this one cabin, in and out, there was nothing else around once you got to it. The restaurant focused on Italian food plus it was also a steakhouse type joint. It was pretty creepy, because aside from the lights from the restaurant, it was pretty much pitch dark outside. My sister and brother and my parents used to tell ghost stories as we were driving in and out of the dirt road to get there. Unfortunately it burned down and the owners decided not to re-open it.

Another favorite, were all the restaurants in department stores back in the late 70's. All of the flagship stores in our local mall had a restaurant in them, even Sears & JC Penney. I don't know why, but I was always begging my parents to take us to them whenever we would go shopping. My parents were total mall rats back in the day, so we were at these stores quite often.

York Steak House was another favorite - it was in our mall as well. The place smelled incredible when you walked in, and you could see them cooking steaks over giant grills in the background. It was a buffet type place where you walked down the line and picked what you wanted. I think there is only one location left these days, in Columbus Ohio.

 

Speaking of Chicago, my favourite was a place called Snack Time in the Cragin area. It's been gone forever now but it was an old school diner but it was the best thing to me as a kid. I think it was the milkshakes.

 

My favorite restaurant as a kid was McDonalds and my mother used to take us there all of the time when we were kids. Her and my dad were never really dine out type of people, so it was always a trip through the drive through and home for us. Now that I am an adult, we do not go to McDonalds very often, but take the kids to a dine in restaurant so that the experience is a little more memorable.