By Amy Wolf, Sunset travel editor

Parents, listen up. There are kid-friendly restaurants, and then there are really kid-friendly restaurants. If you, like me, have one, or in my case, two, very young and very restless children—or even more than that, heaven help you—you know that eating out with the little darlings is a huge pain in the behind roughly 95% of the time, moderately tolerable 3% of the time. That leaves a 2% margin of error for fun.

At the 3 Zero Cafe, the other day, I think I used up my 2% quota. (It was Mother’s Day, so I deserved it.) Having decided to take an impromptu road trip along Highway 1 with the main destination being an elaborate playground called Moss Beach Park (because I’m that kind of mom), we piled into the car and cruised north from Half Moon Bay to Moss Beach.

We were tempted to stop at any number of pony ride concessions, nurseries, and farm stands (note: the strawberries are spectacular right now). Instead we forged on, eager to reach the long-awaited slides and the monkey bars. But when we came upon the diminutive little Half Moon Bay Airport, where cute little planes were lined up to take off, we had to stop. Which is how we noticed the 3 Zero Cafe.

Minutes later I was sipping a mimosa made with fresh-squeezed orange juice, my husband was nursing good coffee, Lilli was standing on her chair trying to reach the miniature airplanes that hung from the ceiling, and Toby was bashing a toy airplane on the table. Which the waitress said was just fine. This is my idea of a good time out.

And our lunch was amazing! Hot grilled salmon for my husband, an artichoke heart and zucchini fritatta for me, a waffle (with whipped cream!) for Lilli, and some cute little corn dogs for Toby. All for a total of 40 bucks. This is no surprise, considering that 3 Zero is the sister restaurant of the Flying Fish Grill in Half Moon Bay, which Sunset nominated last November as one of the best 15 restaurants along our North Coast seafood tour.

En route home we stopped at Sam’s Chowder House, which you can read about in the upcoming July issue of Sunset, to pick up a couple of tuna steaks for dinner in the shop next door. The restaurant looked so tempting, with tables looking smack out on the water, and fresh-looking food, that my daughter announced that we should go out to dinner here, right now. In fact, we do want to go back to Sam's for dinner next time. But we’ll leave the kids at home.