Leave The 12-Year-Old At The Corner Booth Alone!

Yesterday, the New York Times published a story about a 12-year-old wannabe food critic—and, if you can believe, it wasn't even in the trend-happy Sunday Styles. It ran in N.Y./Region. Anyway, as the story goes, pre-teen David Fishman went alone to a just-opened Upper West Side restaurant Salumeria Rosi last week. He did this because he's interested in food, has a mother who'd give him $25 bucks for dinner, and wants to be a food critic. That's basically it. Now, considering the fact that I have a six-year-old cousin who just loooooves Top Chef, Bobby Flay, and the Spotted Pig, I'm not so impressed that David prefers a fancy dinner (where everyone fawned over him, I might add) to Pizza Hut delivery. But what's more, the whole point of the article is to make light of David's pursuit. But he wants to be a food critic, and so he's pursuing his interest just as other kids his age play guitar, start websites, and volunteer at animal shelters (not to imply that he doesn't do any of these things). By writing about this in a "how adorable!" way when he clearly just wants to be treated like a grown up, the NYT makes it seem like there's something special, different, and maybe wrong about David's food fascination. The coverage will make him either embarrassed or pretentious. This being NYC, I go with option B: He'll have a blog by week's end and will be consulting for Danny Meyer by 2009.

David Fishman at Salumeria Rosi, eating food. From NYT.