There are many virtues to raising children in New York, but one of the most overlooked and underappreciated is the ease with which we can avoid ever having to cook for our children.

Don’t get me wrong – I spend far more time in my kitchen preparing tasty eggs and pasta and chicken and steak and crunchy vegetables and fresh fruit salad than I care to recall. And one of my very favorite activities to do with my kids is cook – pies, soups – you name it.

But when I have had my fill of cooking – or, more importantly, cleaning up the kitchen – there are so many places to take my children.

My first choice is almost always the nearby diner. What a fabulous American invention, the diner.There are very few culinary delights that we can, without a doubt, call our own. With their leather booths, fry grills, and bar stools, it is clear that these babies belong to the red, white, and blue.

While fast-food joints have pushed out diners in many cities across the country, here in New York they have flourished. Every few blocks you can find a diner – some more upscale than others. But all are kid-friendly. And why shouldn’t they be? Like the cooks at the diners, my children also think there are three main food groups: salt, sugar, and grease. And like most patrons at the diner, my children also believe that there is no such thing as a food that ketchup cannot improve.

Some diners, such as the Three Guys chain, have expanded their repertoire to include chopped salads and low-fat cottage cheese, and others, such as the Jackson Hole group, include healthier offerings such as baked potatoes and turkey burgers.But famous diners,such as the Empire Diner on 22nd Street and 10th Avenue, and not-so-famous diners, such as my favorite local Upper West Side haunt, the Shining Star on 78th Street and Amsterdam, all offer the same tasty, reliable, caloric fare.

Burgers and grilled cheese, French fries (well done, please), milkshakes, pancakes, eggs and hash browns (also well done, please), fresh orange juice, waffles with vanilla ice cream, hot chocolate, diet coke and seltzer with hulking lemon wedges, tuna on rye, chicken noodle soup, coffee, iced coffee, and more coffee.

Even if there are no longer juke boxes to stuff your nickels and dimes into, there are often crayons and paper place settings to draw on. And in any case, the food comes so quickly, keeping the kids busy is normally as simple as playing a round of “Guess how many packs of sugar there are in this dish?” followed by the equally exciting game, “Guess how many packs of Sweet and Low there are in this dish?”

When the kids are sick of the diner (if such a thing is possible) there are many other options awaiting. On a trip overseas recently, I went into a pizza restaurant, a fast-food chain on a pulsing, urban street. I knew better than to expect to be able to buy a single slice – that is truly a New York phenomenon. But I quickly ordered a small plain pie, expecting to wait a few minutes before being served some distant cousin of the pizza I know and love. Fifteen minutes later my order number was called, and while the pizza wasn’t half bad, the 15-minute wait was torture.

In New York, the entire pizza outing – from ordering to dumping the flimsy, white paper plate in the garbage – lasts 15 minutes. With their hard, orange booths and bleak, mirrored insides, the pizza joints that line our avenues are sometimes a parent’s greatest blessing. My kids will gobble down a slice almost as fast as I will – and all the pizza places near me will happily slice up a cucumber, just in case I’m having a twinge of guilt about the number of food groups being addressed at that particular meal. But, as I remind myself, pizza is, after all, made with tomatoes and cheese.

And then there is the foray into Asian food. If there is one condiment that my children enjoy almost as much as ketchup, it is soy sauce. The kids won’t eat the broccoli? Dump some soy sauce on it. I need to marinate the chicken but don’t have time to make a sauce? Get out the soy sauce.

So it comes as no surprise that First Wok and Empire Szechwan are a big hit with my gang. And ever since many of the fast-food Chinese restaurants began to offer sushi, well, my children are even more excited to grab a quick Sunday night Chinese dinner. Never have vegetables been eaten as enthusiastically as when they are chopped in a dumpling, rolled in rice and seaweed, or smothered in some rich brown sauce. Baby corns, water chestnuts, and snow peas are simply not the same standard fare as carrots, string beans, and potatoes.

At 8 a.m. on a Sunday, when the kids have been up for a couple of hours, sometimes the thought of making pancakes together is fabulous. And sometimes, just the thought of getting out the flour – or even the Aunt Jemima box and a couple of eggs – is too much to bear. That’s when you pick up the telephone, call the diner, and a few minutes later, have piping-hot pancakes, French toast, and eggs arrive at your door. What a luxury. You gotta love New York.