Going out to eat as a family isn’t always smooth sailing, particularly if you’ve got teenagers and their charming mood swings to deal with. Here are six places in Calgary that are great options if you’ve got a surly teen in tow.
Clive Burger
The burgers, shakes and fries at this 17th Avenue S.W. joint are appealing across all age groups. But the particularly great thing about taking teens to Clive Burger is that it’s located underneath Sloth Records, so they can wolf down their meal and then go upstairs and flip vinyl with the band kids while you take your time and pore over Clive Burger’s great selection of magazines, nursing your glass of Village Brewery draft beer.
736 17 Ave. S.W., 403-229-9224, cliveburger.com
Home & Away
There are skateboard decks on the wall, sports on TV, and a menu that covers all the bases from mac ‘n’ cheese to fried chicken, but the biggest advantage of taking the youth of today to Home & Away are the Skeeball and Pop-A-Shot games nestled into the west-facing corner. Head there on a Sunday when the games are free, so they can play to their hearts content while you take advantage of all-day happy-hour pricing.
1337 17 Ave. S.W., 403-455-9789, homeandawayyyc.com
Shiki Menya
There is not much you can do to make your teenager think you are even remotely cool, although taking them to the city’s coolest ramen bar, where you can’t make reservations and have to check Twitter to see if you can even eat there that night, is guaranteed to garner a brief raise of those perma-scowl eyebrows.
827 1 Ave. N.E., 403-454-2722, shikimenya.ca
Tubby Dog
With its array of old-school arcade games, all you need to ensure a harmonious experience at Tubby Dog is a sleeve of quarters. While your teen will no doubt be cool with eating one of Tubby’s done-up hot dogs, if you, personally, would prefer alternate fare, show up on a Tuesday for Tubby Taco night, or on a Wednesday for Tubby Burgers.
1022 17 Ave. S.W., 403-244-0694, tubbydog.com
Without Papers Pizza
The upstairs location in a heritage building in Inglewood lends this pizza joint a kind of urban-hidden-gem vibe, but the real reason to take your teen to Without Papers is that they’re always screening something on the walls -everything from concert documentaries to cult films – which means there’s something engaging to look at while you tuck into your thin-crust slices. Bonus: if the concert documentary is an artist you actually saw live back in the day you’ll have something to talk about!
1216 9 Ave. S.E., 403-457-1154, wopizza.ca
Wow Chicken
The Korean fried chicken at this Kensington storefront is insanely good, especially the gangjeong-style preparation of boneless morsels tossed in a spicy-sweet chilli sauce – each piece is like a crunchy little ka-pow! of flavour. Since getting the sticky sauce all over your fingers is unavoidable, your teen won’t be able to touch their smartphone for the duration of the meal. Plus, the big-screen TV playing a constant stream of whack-a-doo K-pop music videos is fun to gawk at.
324 10 St. N.W., 403-460-7557