McDonald's

There's a real use for this place, and it isn't the food. It's a clean, calm spot to answer emails or nurse a coffee while the kids tear around the playscape, and the staff up front are genuinely nice about it. As a parent looking for an hour of sanity, I'll take it.

Breakfast is the trap. I've had to send back the morning sandwich twice a week, biscuits hard as a rock, hash browns cold, eggs so dry and old I wouldn't feed them to anyone I liked. A microwave does not soften a biscuit, it cements it. McDonald's usually gets breakfast right, so when this one whiffs, somebody was asleep behind the wheel.