Chocolate Frog opens in, tries to tickle, Prairie Village

Prairie Village Shopping Center has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to stylish restaurants, but the newest addition is unusual in its obvious desire to lure families. The Chocolate Frog Cafe — the name is a Harry Potter reference — sounds a little precious on paper, and it’s precious in person, too. But it is at least a significant improvement over the venue that preceded it at 3935 West 69th Terrace: Standees: The Entertaining Eatery, a Denny’s with delusions of grandeur.

Standees was attached to the movie miniplex — also called Standees (still) — where patrons could watch a feature film before or after a meal or, with some implied disapproval given the lack of tables inside the theaters, bring menu items into a movie. You can no longer take very many menu items into the theater, and the dining room has been stripped of its most garish touches, such as the wrap-around digital screen above the bar.

Since local company Leap Hospitality (best known for the Jacobson in the Crossroads) took over the operation of the restaurant component of this petite entertainment “complex,” it has replaced the Standees slickness with a more accessible, cheery dining experience — one that’s not just family-friendly but almost childlike.

That self-conscious cheeriness isn’t to everyone’s taste (I admit, not mine), but the locals seem to have taken to the concept. I’ve visited the restaurant several times since it opened last week, and I’ve seen that young families have found it. The prices are competitive but not inexpensive, but if you want a chilled Bullfrog cocktail (a vividly green concoction of vodka, gin, tequila, rum and something … radioactive?) while the tots scoop up chicken tenders and mini burgers, this is clearly a welcome new option.

I still think Chocolate Frog sounds like a store selling toddlers’ clothes or children’s books, but I’ve been assured that plenty of parents and children will instantly recall the frog-shaped (and frog-leaping) chocolate confection in the Harry Potter books.

There are no chocolate frogs, alas, on the dessert menu, but there is a good Key lime pie; it’s among the best I’ve tasted in the city lately. All the desserts are made in-house, one of the attractions of this restaurant, which does have a talented young chef in charge of the kitchen: Jeremiah Lyman, formerly the sous chef at the Reserve restaurant at the Ambassador Hotel. Here, he has created a crazy-quilt menu of starters, sandwiches (can someone please legislate an end to the word “sammiches”), burgers and home-style entrees. Among the latter: fried chicken, chicken and waffles, meatloaf, fish and chips, and a grilled pork chop with a bourbon-and-apple Cajun cream sauce.

In a neighborhood dominated by country clubs (Indian Hills Country Club is practically across the street, and Mission Hills and the Kansas City Country Club aren’t too far away), Lyman pays homage with his version of a club sandwich, a well-stacked number with turkey, ham, bacon, lettuce and tomato on three layers of toasted white bread — but not cut into the traditional quarters.

Lyman and the staff are ironing out all the inevitable new-restaurant kinks with good humor — restaurant openings are always stressful — and a fresh-faced cheeriness that may irritate grumpier patrons. But for suburban parents herding a pack of toddlers, this Frog might work like a charm.