ottawa foodies

where can i go with lots of air conditioning and that serves grilled cheese sandwiches for kids? my son is super fussy these days and i am melting in our too hot house.

i am leaning towards dick's, but they don't post a kids menu. my other thought is possibly the works.

Elgin Street Diner (www.ottawafoodies.com ) has grilled cheese. Zak's Diner in the Market ( www.ottawafoodies.com ) also has grilled cheese, and their malts/milkshakes used to be pretty good too!

Pete-in-Ottawa great minds think alike! The first two places that came to mind were the ones you recommended-;)

hipfunkyfun There is a diner tag here: ottawafoodies.com/tag/56

I'm not sure if any of those places are close to home but it might be a start...

I also found an online menu for Dick's Drive In: dickshamburgers.com/

HipFunkyFun, if I recall correctly, you live in the West end, non? There's also the Diner (owned by ESD) on Richmond.

For the record, Zak's milkshakes are still incredible.

I thought I had seen a kid's menu at Patty's Pub (Old Ottawa South) that had grilled cheese, but their online menu makes no mention of kids dishes ( www.pattyspub.ca/ ). I've had pretty good luck at Patty's in the past, and I like their Boxty ( and dislike when they charged me extra to substitute some veggies on the plate :-( )

don't know if it fits the bill schedule-wise (etc.), but there's a couple Community Centres that have little cafes.

Dovercourt's, for example, sells grilled bagels and the like. Not epicurean, exactly (though in Sept they're starting to offer art-in-in bread!), but on top of the food, they've got a pool! What more can you / kids ask for? (call ahead if this were a compelling option, though.)

I hate to recommend them, because they are on "the list", but the Work's grilled cheese is the best in the city (and as a father of 2 toddlers, I have eaten my fair share of leftover grilled cheeses).

It is served on a big fluffy croisant, oozing with butter and real cheddar.

Anywhere that has bread and cheese is very likely to make you a grilled cheese off the menu. Plus it'll be cheaper (probably by half!) than ESD or Zak's.

It gets tiresome making the dozen things over and over and over and over...

So hipfunkyfun... where did you end up going?

i'm sad to say we got stuck at the royal oak in the glebe. we were in the area running errands and found ourselves too hot, too tired, and too hungry to drive out to dick's. we were even too done in to walk down to the works. it is our own fault for not being better organized i think.

anyway, i didn't like the food, but my son and husband liked their meals. grilled cheese, fries and milk for son, hamburger with wasabi and stilton for hubby. the good news was that the ac was on high and the beer on tap was creemore and mill st tank house ale. so an hour spent in cold room with decent beer made up for my dinner (veggie wrap, the fries tasted frozen and the dressing on the wrap was too much and too sweet).

oh and thanks for the suggestions. we were thinking of patty's pub, but weren't sure if there would be kids options. we seldom go there, but always enjoy ourselves when we do.

Living in West Carleton, I'm not sure where your closest Dairy queen would be but the kids menu does have grilled cheese as a choice and its a/c. Haven't been in one in years but DH felt the need for a dipped cone on the weekend and i noticed that option (too bad they didn't have it 20 years ago when my kids were small!) Fast food but fits for summer.

Dunn's has a triple decker grilled cheese and lots of AC.

the grilled cheese was for my toddler. i think a triple decker is a bit ambitious for now, but will keep that in mind.

I had the grilled cheese at Zak's (albeit this was a couple of years ago). It was good and made with real cheese. I know this is normally seen as a plus, but I thought it might be important to know since it's destined to be eaten by a toddler (I'm assuming that most picky kids would expect your run-of-the-mill fake Kraft Single type cheese).

good to know and real cheese is a plus. i have managed to get him used to old cheddar and whole grain bread for his grilled cheese. we don't have many processed foods in the house. eating out these days is a treat, so we don't worry too much if it is white bread and cheese slices since we know it is a rare occasion.

They serve grilled cheese at the Wild Oat as well. It's made with real cheese which has been a bit too sharp in flavour for some of the toddlers that I've taken there.