If you feed the family soul, the bodies get very peckish. When I take the kids to a museum, we may well give the Titians and Tintorettos a miss and bypass a room full of 16th century French armour. But we always visit the café. The catering and the toilets are the only places you can guarantee a family like mine will go when they enter a gallery. And usually twice.

There’s a handful of brilliant museum cafes; I’ve written before about the one at the Roald Dahl museum in Great Missenden and the Tinderbox in Odense, Denmark.

But it’s unusual for a museum café to have anything more for kids than a cardboard lunchbox with ‘five items to choose’ inside, none of which is the least bit appetizing – even for my sweet-toothed, carbohydrate-crazy nine-year-old twins. And when a museum goes to a lot of trouble to be child friendly, with art carts and family trails, why is the café often still a dull, adult-only space which could be absolutely anywhere? Why can’t the same fabulous inventiveness and sense of wonder extend beyond the galleries to the cake counter, where even the Victoria Sponge can look like an ancient exhibit rather than something tasty to eat.

Kids in Museums, a visitor-led charity working with museums to make them more family friendly (and which I run!) is asking families what they think about museum cafes – and what ingredients would make them better. The plan is, once families have drawn up a menu of possible improvements, Kids in Museums will work with museums to make it happen. There’s a very short survey to fill in.  And if you do, you may win family tickets to the fabulous Ministry of Food exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London. (Just quote Takethefamily) You could even pop into the Kitchen Front, the museum’s café which has had a wartime makeover, now serving National Loaf (grey bread made to a rations recipe), rabbit pot pie (just tell them it’s chicken) and old-fashioned jam tarts. That’s a bit better than a cardboard box.

Please complete the Kids in Museum's Cafe survey and remember add in Takethefamily to win family tickets to the Ministry of Food Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum.

The Food exhibition at the Imperial War Museum runs until 3rd January 2011 and is open 10am to 6pm.  A family ticket costs £13.

Take a look at our feature by the author of The Frommer’s ‘London With Kids’ guidebook, Rhonda Carrier, where she gives her top tips for museum eats in the capital.

Other interesting articles on eating with kids:
A Fantastically Foul Feast with Roald
Eating with Kids: Museums