Inexpensive Family-Friendly Restaurants in Chicago

Dining out with a family is expensive. Dining out in a big, unfamiliar city like Chicago can be disastrously expensive. Let's look at some cheap family restaurants in and around Chicago where you take the whole family to dine. We are looking at restaurants and diners where each person can get a complete meal for under $10 per person. And we are looking for great tasting, kid friendly meals at that.

The Calliope Cafe, on Lincoln St. features the usual sandwiches, soups, salads and desserts, but with nice little touches of quality and creativity. They use lots of fresh ingredients, like spinach instead of iceberg lettuce, bacon instead of unidentified fat chunks in soups, different varieties of breads, asian chicken salad with grilled chicken and a homemade carrot cake.

A Taste of Heaven in Andersonville, IL is a warm, family restaurant featuring delicious home-baked treats like scones and poppy seed muffins. Dinners are delicious variations of family favorites: lasagna, chicken pot pie, spaghetti and other home-style meals a budget prices.

Smoque BBQ on N. Pulaski, is like an indoor picnic, with lots of succulent and spicy Bar-be-que favorites. There ribs but also pulled pork BBQ and smoky chicken BBQ (my favorite). There are the usual BBQ extras, like macaroni and cheese, baked beans and cole slaw, all of which I am very picky about. I make my own home-made of each of these. Smoque's mac and cheese is really cheesy, unlike most mac and cheese the others, while not as good as my own are tasty. Kids love this Americana type of restaurant.

Weiner and Still Champion is a cute little greasy spoon in Evanston IL on Dempster St. Weiner and Still Champion features a bare bones menu that kids will love! Hot dogs, brats, burgers, chicken salad are the main fare. Combo meals, reminiscent of the 'basket' meals of my youth run from $5 to $7.75 and include fries and a drink. The name is came from an elementary school naming contest.