Children as Food Connoisseurs
The idea of mealtime evokes in most of us a fond reminiscence of times spent around the family table or special evenings with friends at a wonderful restaurant. When you add children to the equation you may get varied responses to the idea of mealtime. Most of us have, at some point in time, had the pleasure of enjoying a meal with a child that loved to eat. There are few things more enjoyable than watching a child 
devour a meal with reckless abandon. Whether it is a bowl of Roley Poly peas or strands of pasta enjoyed for the first time, it signifies, hopefully, a lifetime of enjoyable dining. Then there are the “picky” eaters. You know them. They are always seated next to you in your neighborhood bistro. You can’t miss them and even if you could, the exasperated parents with the flushed cheeks are a dead give away.
I don’t know the psychological reasons why some children become food haters but I do know that, in my experience as a chef and restaurant owner, most kids that have been exposed to many types of food from an early age do not suffer this fate. Because my restaurant does feature many vegetarian and vegan items we do have our share of vegetarian friendly kids. I can tell you that more often than not they understand the food offered, order or pick the items for themselves and seem to genuinely enjoy the experience. But this phenomenon is not limited to veggie kids. I have met so many children and young adults who are full fledged foodies. They want to meet the chef, see the kitchen, and discuss the menu. Most of these kids were exposed to a wide variety of food at a very young age whether it was eating, shopping or preparing it.
In order to propagate more of these young food connoisseurs I have done some work with kids myself. In my own family and at my restaurant I have made a marked effort to get children involved with cooking and preparing and enjoying food. My earliest “experiment” was my nephew. I would take him to the food co-op to shop and we would spend the majority of our time in the produce isle picking out veggies for soup. He loved to learn the names (he knew what fennel was when he was 4) see the colorful varieties and pick each item out. When we got home he would sit there while I washed and cut the vegetables and would always lend a hand. His Mom, my sister, is a great cook who lived for a while in Sicily and pasta was always his favorite. So, no matter what you were cooking, this little boy always expected a pasta course. He came to visit me at one of the restaurants I was designing, it was a huge, exotic waterfront restaurant with tented tables on a white sand beach, but 
when he arrived, the first thing he wanted to do was see the kitchen and meet the chef. He even brought his own chef hat. That kid loves food and restaurants.
For those of you who are at a loss of what to do or how to do it, my suggestion is that you start by taking your kids shopping or better yet take them to a local farm or dairy and let them see the source of their food. Discuss the seasons and prepare special family meals to celebrate these seasons. There are also plenty of kid friendly tools out there which can be used to prepare an entire course. Plastic serrated knives made for cutting lettuce leaves without oxidizing them are great. A kid can prepare an entire salad with this tool. You can then have them shake up simple vinaigrette.
This knife can also be used for slicing a toasted baguette for crostini. Add some diced tomato, olive oil and basil and your child has prepared the bruschetta! Use a child sized grater to add some parmesan or grate carrots for the salad.
A mallet or meat tenderizer is always a kid favorite. Have them pound out the chicken between two sheets of wax paper for you and then, while you sauté the paper thin filets in olive oil, have them juice a lemon or orange with a simple soup spoon for a sauce. Finish it off with some herbs your young chef has pulled from the stem. Nothing will ever taste as delicious to either of you as a meal that you have prepared together.
