This.

Look at the menu, and look at what people are eating on the patio of the cafe. If it looks good, eat there. Look at the location (generally stay away from tourist trap areas, and that usually means walking an extra block so you can't see a famous landmark.) If there are menus on the sidewalk in English, German and Spanish, probably keep walking.

Having kids shouldn't limit your options. Ask the concierge for the place for you to walk to in order to buy croissants, pain au chocolate, and coffee every morning. Your kids will destroy the hotel room with buttery goodness, but you also will not spend $75+ on breakfast going out to get a non-alcoholic breakfast. Besides, you can bribe the ever loving hell out of them with the patisserie products you will walk by. A pistachio patisserie? Your kids will spend an hour in there if you let them. Steak frites, cheese, they'll be fine. Use the hell out of the hotel concierge if there is something specific you want to eat/do. The US doesn't have useful concierges, but in other countries, their job is exactly to pull strings for customers. Email them weeks out, they'll help you (at least in the Marriott branded properties I always stay in.) Ask them!

Don't be afraid to find the groceries off the beaten paths to find chickens that have been roasting since 8am, and bathing fabulously fatty potatoes in their juices when you pick them up for dinner on a random picnic on the Seine. Americans underestimate the extent to which Parisians hang out near the Seine and enjoy themselves. I've seen similar in Chile, where there are just thousands of people with a bottle of wine and some cheese or take out, enjoying life.

Leave time in Paris for a bit of randomness when it comes to food. All kinds of bloggers are driving advertising traffic, but asking the front desk where they would eat a meal at is likely going to get you more inexpensive, and authentic results than traditional methods. (I am not a Michelin chaser, if you make good food, I will go there, $10 or $100 a person.)