NVM Review

By Warren Rojas

“C’mon chef. We’re leaving,” one flustered mom calls out to the oblivious youth still thoroughly engrossed in picking at her self-styled Generous George’s pizza and doodling on her complimentary chef’s hat.

Still, I suspect that type of dining devotion is preferable to the proverbial kicking and screaming, a routine that accompanies dragging most small children to a restaurant.

It’s easy enough to see why the average kid might want to linger indefinitely at Generous George’s. Most walls are covered with vintage toys, eye-catching knickknacks and cartoon figures of yore. Kids are encouraged to color on everything from the menu to the aforementioned chef’s hats, and colorful balloons bob cheerily from just about every seat in sight.

Management does its best to circumvent traditional pitfalls of family dining, supplying children with all the accessories and attention they need while also catering to parents as best they can. Checks are delivered promptly and returned lickety-split to facilitate seamless departures, while daily specials—including free kids meals, family-style feasts and half-price pizzas—make feeding an army fully fiscally possible.

Most kids seem to go gaga over the make-your-own pizza option: Staff unveils an 8-inch pie and invites interested tykes to assemble the sauce, cheese and a topping of their choosing as best they see fit, all from the comforts of their own dining chair.

A spaghetti and meatball plate pulls no punches, delivering meat sauce-slathered noodles (think seasoned beef, garlic and sauteed mushrooms; not the Boyardee-like tomato-sugar solution so many others pass off as marinara), a giant meatball and accompanying slabs of pizza bread to the table.

Assuming an ultra-marathon is in your immediate future, don’t think twice about ordering a signature pasta pie, towering mounds of protein-packed noodles (loved the rosemary chicken-mushroom cream sauce pairing) baked into a deep-dish shell.