Slow Food in the UK, has long run a project called the Slow Food Kids, which takes Children on a Taste Adventure: using all their senses to experience food.
What is inside the velvet bag? Look and see how an apple can be sweet or sour? Look at how food which is crunchy seems to taste different when it’s a puree.
In the hospitality trade we also give children a taste adventure – be that broad or narrower. Spending a lot of time in Italy, it is the absolute norm to see little bambino eating exactly the same as his parents; just smaller portions. Hearty Tuscan bean soups thick with bitter kale? Tripe sandwiches in Florence? Sea urchins in Sicily? None a problem.
Yet here many restaurants have a different attitude to children’s food; indeed, we have children’s menus – and perhaps that is where the issue lays. Rather than chicken nugget, dinosaur faces, or any side as long as it’s chips, we could get our future restaurant diners palates ready for real food today?
So, I set a challenge: Rip up children’s menus everywhere; and have a small notice that says “Most dishes available in children’s half sizes at half price.
Now that really would be an adventure.
Shane Holland is the Executive Chairman of Slow Food in the UK
