How to Feed Your Foodie Kid

I’d always been offended when handed a kid’s menu as a young’un. “And a kid’s menu for the little one?” Me, a chicken tender-eating plebian? “Oh, please,” I would’ve liked to say.  There wasn’t a better feeling than pointing my nasty little eyes at our waiter, setting my colored-in kids menu aside, and pridefully ordering pho with extra tripe and tendon. I was very happily budding into a pretentious little asshole—I write this as I eat spoonfuls of salmon roe straight from the jar.

The kid’ menu, though, can be an essential thing, so long as it’s not simply outfitted with frozen pre-made foods. It takes a remarkable amount of fostering to morph a little one into an egotistical foodie, and this fostering simply doesn’t happen with Sysco nuggets and mustard. Neither can it happen (at least at first) with liver mousse and clams. The first step in raising anyone but a picky eater is just to give the damn kid what they want.

A few years into my first kitchen gig, a server, Tina, approached the line and explained that a six-year-old child at table thirty-five had requested a grilled cheese. A pretty simple request, really. The sous chef butted in:

“Do you see that on the menu? Do you? We don’t do that here.”

“We have the fucking bread, and we have the fucking cheese,” I said.

“It’s a waste of time is what it is.”

“So what, you fucking taint? It’s a grilled cheese. We’ll do it, Tina.”

I stormed into the cooler, mid-rush, to grab two pieces of pre-sliced sourdough and a block of Tillamook cheddar, and I made that little girl her fucking grilled cheese, mostly out of anger toward the sous, but also because, just maybe, that little girl would realize that the world is her oyster. Hopefully she’ll come back and try some oysters on her own dollar when she’s all grown up.

Kids will naturally order things they find interesting—so long as they don’t know quite what it is. I remember ordering Ikura and Tamago at a sushi bar because I’d seen the shiny pearls of soon-to-be salmon and slabs of sweetened egg in my little sushi identification book at home. I studied that thing more than my subtraction flashcards. My parents were befuddled when I pridefully exclaimed:

“Ikura and Tamago please!”

“What the hell did our son just get?”

But before they could get an answer, an answer that even I couldn’t have honestly given, the sushi chef said, “Yes. Ikura, Tamago, sir,” and walked away. I’m not sure I’ve ordered anything but Ikura and Tamago at a sushi bar to this day.

 There was a restaurant, now a pretty successful one, Roy’s, that to me had mastered the art of securing future foodie clientele. They put just as much, or possibly more, effort into their kid’s menu as they did their full a la carte and prefix. My parents and I would go sit outside there on special occasions and, within just seconds of sitting down, there’d be a kiddie cocktail, half of a cheese quesadilla, and some assorted crudites in front of me. Then they’d set the kid’s menu down:

Crudites and Quesadilla to Start

-       Braised Short Ribs and Rice

-       Teriyaki Chicken with Cucumber

-       Misoyaki Butterfish, Bok Choy, Onigiri

House Made Ice Cream Sandwich

These were, for the most part, just smaller portions of the adult-sized a la carte menu items. Looking back on this place, it’s no wonder I turned out the way I have, plating roasted oysters and rice balls and eating lamb fat out of a quart container. I’d force my parents to take me every night they weren’t working. I’d even offer to save and pay out of my six-year-old pockets. Nothing meant more to my palate than Roy’s.

When my parents would go without me, I’d threaten to pack up my little sushi book and my stuffed animals and run away. They did this once for an anniversary party with some family from the mainland, and they left my cousins and I with a babysitter downtown. My taste buds and I, doomed to the amenities of one of Honolulu’s nicest hotels, complained endlessly that my parents were dining at Roy’s with misoyaki butterfish melting in their mouths, all while I was stuck in what might’ve been any other child’s dream: room service chicken tenders and fries paired with Wild Krats and Dinosaur Train. It may have been that piercing jealousy that began my anxious attachment to food and cooking. It’s something I still can’t quite shed. We all have the attatchment—one that has you moaning over a cheesy bowl of grits in the dining room, or one that has you crying in the walk-in after a poor performance on the line. It all started when we were young.

Words by George Vedder

Graphic by Samuel Prater