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With their publicists and supper clubs these kids have come a long way from licking the mixing spoon
A big noise in the restaurant industry once told me that while most chefs can refine technique, only a few are born with very good palates. Some children express a strong interest in food from an early age, displaying prodigious talent in the kitchen or a refreshing delight in trying new dishes. Inevitably, the food they favour cooking and eating tends towards the professional: it's a long way from licking the mixing spoon.
Flynn McGarry is a 13-year-old from the San Fernando valley. With his angular jaw and light red hair he looks not unlike a young Tom Aikens, who had two Michelin stars by the time he was 26. McGarry runs a monthly supper club, Eureka, from his parents' home. They've indulgently converted his bedroom into a gleaming professional kitchen. He's done stages at high-end restaurants across America, and his 2012 summer plans include a stint at the three Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park in New York, and "finishing eighth grade".
It sounds gimmicky, but then you see his food. Short ribs with coffee and celeriac purée and wild mushrooms; scallops with watermelon, daikon and mustard; a dessert of chocolate with sweet pea, olive oil and strawberry. The pairings are intelligent, the plating astonishingly sensitive. Even if he's cribbing techniques from the internet and sleb chef cookbooks, it's food that makes you sit up. A local restaurateur who let him take over a restaurant for the evening describes him as an "artist".
Inevitably, McGarry wants three Michelin stars and a restaurant on the World's 50 Best list – "prob – hopefully the top five", he stumbles, a little tellingly. "Sometimes I sort of think he's like, you know, reincarnated from like a French chef in the, you know, 20s or something," says his bewildered mother, adding almost guiltily: "I'm going to have to turn into a foodie." McGarry himself, when asked if his mother gave him a love of cooking, says "no" five times.
Sixteen-year-old Greg Grossman started catering parties in the Hamptons when he was 11. "My parents know a lot of people," he drawls, and their connections help explain his publicist and TV show. But his food sounds amazing: a typical dish at a recent private dinner was coconut panna cotta with kumamoto oyster encased with nori, mountain salt, oyster verjuice and micro spearmint, served with a carbonated sake.
There are kiddie critics, too. Earlier this year, a 12-year-old New Yorker named David Pines published a restaurant guidebook, Pines Picks, aimed at children. So he reviews burgers, cookies and pizza, but has also eaten frog's legs and, I gather from his website, raw snails. These adventurous tastes – he likes everything apart from raisins – serve him well, and he writes with the enthusiasm and engaging innocence of a child: sushi is "swimmingly fresh", while of a dessert at Hix Belgravia, he wrote: "the waiter pours an amazing caramel banana sauce on top — and boom — this very good dessert becomes a sensational one". I really love that "boom".
David Fishman is another New Yorker with the manner of an experienced gastronome. Reviewing the three-star Le Bernadin for GQ as a 12-year-old, he wrote: "Down from heaven came the crab. It was enclosed in a zucchini flower, doused with black truffle sauce, topped with shaved truffles. It was out of this world." Fishman, "with a wave of his fork" as one observer put it, will inform a respected chef that his octopus terrine is "feeble". Bless him, he walks through the kitchen of a Gordon Ramsay restaurant holding one hand grandly behind his back, like the Duke of Edinburgh inspecting a regiment.
And that's the central difficulty with some of these kids. What can be unsettling or even spooky about them is not their talents, which may be considerable. It's the fact they are like miniature adults. Children are usually desperate to grow up, of course, and any parent who indulges their sprog's gauche precocity or mature interests should do so in the knowledge that it could make them old before their time. (And none of these young people would be doing any of this without their parents' support.) High-end cooking aims for sophistication, so children with an interest in it will always seem older than they are. Nothing ages you like having a palate.