KIDS IN THE KITCHEN : Is Dining Out With Dennis a Menace? : Restaurants: The kid biz is better than ever.

Little kids are eating in restaurants more often than ever. According to a recently released study for the National Restaurant Assn., the number of times children younger than 6 visit a restaurant has increased 36%. (The study looked at data from the years 1982 to 1988.)

As anyone who has recently taken a walk in the park on a sunny Sunday could tell you, part of the reason more kids are showing up in restaurants is that there are more kids than there used to be. The population percentage of the 6-and-under crowd jumped 8% from 1982 to 1988.

As a parent who has spent more than a few harrowing moments in the presence of a 5-year-old armed with silverware, I had lots of questions about the phenomenon of grown-ups taking little kids to restaurants. Questions such as: “Are these people crazy?” and “What kind of restaurant are we talking about?”

The easiest question to answer was the last one. I was reassured to find in the study that the bulk of the kid business was being done in what the restaurant industry calls “quick-service” establishments. To parents, quick service means a place that has fast food, nothing breakable and no silverware that can be used as a weapon.

Eight out of 10 times when families with kids younger than 6 visited a restaurant, they picked a quick-service place. The study didn’t list the reasons why quick-service was the preferred style of dining. But I know a few.

First off, if “quick service” lives up to its name, the “dining experience” is over with in a hurry. At a quick-service event, there is no time for chitchat over cocktails or nibbling on hors d’oeuvres. Instead, it is this: Put the hay down where the goats can get it. That and standing clear of any airborne ketchup pretty much sum up the parental responsibilities at a quick-service meal.

Another thing a quick-service restaurant has going for it is that it is easy to take the food and run. This is called off-premise dining by the restaurant industry. Parents I know call this style of feeding a variety of names, including “anywhere-but-here,” “in-the-car” or simply “out-of-public-view.”

At quick-service restaurants, 63% of the younger-than-6 business was off-premise, the study said. Put another way: Any time a dad of a younger-than-6 kid walked into a fast-food place, chances were about 60-40 that he was going to grab the food and flee.

As for the palate of little eaters, the restaurant association study found that the menu item most popular with children younger than 6 was soda. That was followed by sandwiches, including hamburgers and frankfurters. Then came French fries, pizza, fried chicken, ice cream, milk, other desserts, Mexican food and finally, juice.

For me the only surprise in this ranking was that pizza finished fourth. Though the survey did report that despite its fourth-place finish, there was a surge of interest in pizza among younger-than-6 eaters. Or, in the words of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle followers: “Pizza dudes!”

I should point out that the survey also found that not everyone who takes children to restaurants believes in the feed-and-flee approach. Table-service restaurants, where customers sit down and politely give their food orders to a waiter or waitress, also reported a 28% increase in customers younger than 6 between 1982 and 1988.

My rough translation of the restaurant industry statistics for that period is as follows: Just about two out of every 10 times that a family with younger-than-6 eaters ventured to a restaurant, they picked a restaurant that had waiters.

My explanation for this phenomenon is that there are increasing numbers of parents out there who are very brave, brave enough to believe their children will sit still for 50 minutes. Another explanation could be that there are increasing numbers of parents out there who are very tired. So tired that at supper time, they take their kids to a restaurant and hope for the best.

As for myself, I remain timid about taking my family to a real restaurant with real silverware.

I think of the time several months ago when we dined in our hotel room during an overnight trip to Washington. The hotel, the Four Seasons, had a special room-service menu for children, offering kid fare such as chicken noodle soup at less-than-astronomic prices.

The hotel also provided bathrobes. When our 9-year-old and 5-year-old sons saw my wife and me in robes, they immediately put on bathrobes as well. And so when the room-service cart arrived, our family “dined” in bathrobes.

I’ll say this for bathrobes: They sure soak up spilled soup. But I don’t think the public is quite ready for them as dining-room wear.