Kiddie menus: past, present and future

Celebrity chef and real-life lifesaver Tom Colicchio made Diet Coke seem downright sophisticated in the much-repeated TV commercial seen at last night’s Academy Award telecast (you can read Fat City blogger Owen Morris’ thoughts on the chef and the commercial here), but it’s another Colicchio story that interests me. The Top Chef judge was interviewed by the New York Times last week about feeding picky kids. The story proved that even a celebrity chef can have difficulty getting children to eat healthy dishes. Colicchio did say his teenaged son “is not a chicken finger kid.”

Chicken fingers — along with fries, grilled cheese sandwiches, hamburgers and macaroni-and-cheese — seem to be the usual suspects on modern menus designed for the toddler crowd.

A few months ago, I had the distinct honor of being one of the guest “Community Curators” for the Kansas City Museum, which permitted me to look through its impressive collection of vintage menus from the many trains that passed through Union Station during its heyday and the menus of the iconic restaurants that were in the station until the 1960s.

The children’s menus really stood out. For one thing, I can’t remember ordering off of a children’s menu when I was a kid and probably didn’t. I do remember looking at those cute little menus as a free-thinking pre-teen and thinking, “There’s nothing here I want to eat,” since the selection typically featured peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, spaghetti and meatballs and, of course, hamburgers.

Before World War II, the offerings were a lot healthier and sophisticated than the mostly greasy and fattening dishes offered today. The museum’s menu collection includes a stash from Edna Binkley, a former waitress at the Harvey House, who had a really charming child’s menu dating back to the late 1930s. Its dinner choices included chicken livers in butter sauce or lamb chops. I can’t imagine any the fussy kid eaters I know even agreeing to taste one of those dishes, let alone one of the desserts, like rice pudding.

But there is a new movement to improve the quality of offerings for kids. The Boston Globe recently wrote about restaurants making a serious effort to change the concept of a high-fat, high-sodium menu for children.

Since I don’t have children and, mercifully, rarely dine out with them, I’m hardly an expert on restaurants that offer healthier, more creative options for child diners. You parents out there will have to help  me out on that one.