opentable

Earlier this week, restaurant reservation site OpenTable announced its 2012 diners' choice award winners for the top 75 kid-friendly restaurants in the country. The list reflects the responses of some five million reviews submitted by active OpenTable users, and the most popular cuisine for kiddies was found to be Italian and American. "These winning restaurants are creating a child- and family-friendly dining experience that has more to do with food and fun than merely price and portion size," says Caroline Potter, OpenTable's chief dining officer. "They offer inventive menus that can satisfy any child, from those with picky palates to adventurous young eaters — as well as mom and dad."

OpenTable's Top 75 Kid-Friendly Restaurants in the US:

• Aquarium Restaurant — Denver, CO
• Benihana — Encino, CA
• The Brooklyn Diner Times Square — New York, NY
• Buca di Beppo — 25 winning locations nationwide
• Burger Jones — Burnsville, MN
• Burger Jones — Minneapolis, MN
• Café Pesto — Kawaihae, HI
• Crown & Crumpet — San Francisco, CA
• Deerfield — Newark, DE
• Dee’s — Forest Hills, NY
• F. McLintocks Saloon & Dining House — Pismo Beach, CA
• Genji Japanese Steakhouse — Dublin, OH
• Graziano’s — Niles, IL

Click here to see the rest of OpenTable's top kid-friendly restaurants!

• The 25 weirdest food names, and what they sound like. — Bon Appétit
• Could OpenTable face new competition from Google? — San Francisco Chronicle
• Presenting Guilt Taste, Ruth Bourdain's parody of Gilt Taste. — Twitter
• Just wondering: would you buy sushi from Walgreens? — Grub Street SF
• Beware of exploding watermelons! — Guardian
• Border patrol snags 385 pounds of contraband bologna. — Dallas News
• Graduation gifts, sorted by college major. — Chow
• Are chefs to blame for America's obesity epidemic? — Time
• Bad cooking habits you should break. — Huffington Post Food

Around 42,000 new restaurants open each year, and Spring seems to be award season for the ones that experience immediate success. This week, online reservations site OpenTable released a list of the nation's 10 hottest new restaurants, and they include everything from Stephanie Izard's Girl & the Goat in Chicago to Cleo in Los Angeles.

I was surprised to discover that no Bay Area establishments hit the top 10, despite OpenTable's strong San Francisco base. Still, it was fun to review it, then create my own mental list of the city's buzzed-about new restaurants. What, in your opinion, have been the most exciting openings in your town?

Source

• Mike Tyson might be opening a kosher restaurant chain. — Eater
• Caffeinated alcoholic drink Four Loko buckles to the pressure and goes decaf. — Atlantic Food
• Why OpenTable is like iTunes, only worse. — Grub Street NY
• KFC's bestselling Double Down has mysteriously disappeared in Canada. — Globe and Mail
• NBC rolls out The Feast, another food site, in selected US cities. — The Feast
• Portland, OR, is America's new food eden. — Time
• Busting 15 food and cooking myths. — Huffington Post Food
• Robert Downey Jr. is the new voice for Planters peanuts. — Serious Eats

• Learn how to make candy corn from scratch. — Serious Eats
• Take a visual tour through the Obamas' garden. — Feast
• Meet AppleJack and Calvados, Fall's signature spirits. — The Atlantic
• Is OpenTable worth it? — Inside Scoop SF
• Find out what Iron Chef Jose Garces eats on a regular basis. — Grub Street Phillie
• Combine vanilla beans and vodka and you'll get vanilla extract. — Eatocracy
• How to deal with a drunken house guest. — Chow
• Q and A with Mario Batali. — Eater NY
• 100 dishes that make use of pumpkin. — Endless Simmer

• The best way to reheat leftover pizza. — Slice
• Paula Deen has been robbed by her maid. — Huffington Post Food
• The person behind Ruth Bourdain is still a mystery. — Wall Street Journal
• Yelp has partnered with Opentable. — Eater
• All salt is not created equal. — Chow
• Is seaweed the new superfood? — The Epi-Log
• The two Franks behind The Frankies Spuntino Cookbook discuss their dreams of being rock stars. — Feast
• The best places to dine outdoors in San Francisco. — Grub Street SF

If you're looking for a place to eat, Yelp is a great service, offering reviews, photos, recommendations, and even useful apps for checking out places on the go. Now, you can also make reservations straight from the site through a new partnership with reservations site OpenTable.

While users must have an account with Yelp (and be logged into it) to access the pop-up, you do not need to have an OpenTable account to make a reservation. Just use the site as you normally would to select the date, time, and size of your party, and click to reserve.

The Open Table app for the iPhone has changed my mobile dining life, but even if you're not an iPhone user, you can now get in on this action.

Open Table has launched free mobile apps for both the Palm Pre and the BlackBerry!

Open Table jumped on the mobile trend early, and I'm glad to see them making their way into non-Apple app stores as well.

If you needed another excuse to spontaneously dine al fresco this Summer, I just gave it to you.