BJ's and Red Robin are  awesome for noise control.  Myself, I prefer Chateau Ijames (aka - my place) because it doesn't involve purchasing an overly priced kid's meal that my son won't eat but demands he gets, it doesn't involve wasting money on a meal when the kids ruin it, and, i can wear my pajamas! 

and speaking of overpriced kids meals, Denny's is NOT overpriced on their munchkin meals.  So, if parent's can tolerate the Denny's cuisine du jur, then take the tots to Denny's! 

We've pretty much given up eating out at restaurants that have servers, especialy now with a 3rd in tow. Heck, for the most part we don't even eat at the drive thru joints. We grab our food on the way home from my son's baseball game and eat it at our own house. 

As you basically said, any nightmare restaurant is one with a much more quiet atmosphere - Olive Garden is at the top of my husband's list.. I also don't think we've every taken them to quaint places like Frugatti's or Mimi's Cafe. 

For kid friendly, I'm all about Del Taco! ;) But seriously, for "real" restaurants, Mauricio's works for us. Kids eat free on Wednesdays, and if you'd like to dine on a non-Wednesday, just have your kids color the worksheet they give out and turn it into the front desk. You'll get a certificate for a free kid's meal for a future visit.  The chips and salsa keep my kids occupied and if the weather is nice, try the patio. Only drawback there is occasional cigarette smoke, but your kids can be as loud as you let them.  We've also found Elephant Bar to be noisy enough to drown out my toddler's screams. 

And as much as I personally hate buffets, they work wonders with my kids - everyone gets what they want, and we can give them an early dessert while we finish our meal :)

 I personally LOVE to eat out.  Did a lot as a kid so it's been hard to adjust to cutting that out when I got married and we started to save for our house and then for our photography business.  And now that Katelyn is in our lives, we hardly ever eat out.  Why bother?  She's gonna scream,  want to run around the place, throw her over-priced food and make me ask for to-go boxes so we can eat it at home.  It's just hard with kids!!!  I know we plan to have 2-3 more kids, so until the last one is about two and a half we won't eat out a lot...and by then we probably won't be able to afford anywhere that doesn't give free kids meals on a certain night!  lol

 We've found that ethnic places, on the whole, seem to be low-key and child-friendly enough, or at least child tolerant.  :)  We just went to the new

Cuban place

near BHS, and The Pumpkin loved it, again.  Another perennial fave is

Pho Vi

on Union, for Vietnamese noodle soup--we always sit near the big fish tank fo rbuilt-in entertainment.  And she's been good at J's Place for soul food, and

Thai Kitchen

, and

Grandview

for Chinese.  Places that are not as big and crowded as the chains, but are used to catering to families and kids (bringing out plastic utensils for the kids without being asked, say, or not minding a bit of walking around within reason), with good, downhome food.  Not to say that she never has inappropriate meltdowns in restaurants, but I guess we just have trained ourselves to plan to avoid them--making sure we don't wait too long so that everyone's not starving and grumpy, bringing a bag full of crayons and paper and a book or two.  We love food, and love being able to share it with our daughter.

Hey, dunno if this a coincidence, but today's Baby Blues comic strip (it's not on the strip's website yet, they're a couple weeks behind), has Darryl, Wanda and their 3 kids at the hostess desk at a restaurant saying, "Table for five, chairs for four, crayons for two, and napkins for thirty."  Heh.

[BTW, the developers are trying to figure out why submitting a comment with embedded links creates weird formatting, sorry!]