Member-only story
What the Heck Is Kid’s Food Anyways?
Where it came from and why we’re doing it wrong
I was about nine years old, when my Japanese grandmother came to visit our family in the United States for Thanksgiving. She had been to the United States before but it had been a while, and even then she had only been to very select parts of big cities like New York or San Francisco.
Wanting to show her a bit more of what our suburban life looked like, our family decided to take her out to a classic, Italian-American, neighborhood restaurant on her first night with us — a nice but casual place where the lighting was low but the music was loud, and the waiters were more friendly than professional, but that was the way everyone liked it.
After we were seated and the menus were handed out, she pointedly spent some time flipping through the pages but eventually just looked over to my mom, asking her what she should order. But when she saw that my mom was being too indecisive herself, she turned to us grandkids and asked us what we were going to eat.
“Well we’re ordering from the kid’s menu, and I don’t think you’d want kid’s food.”
She laughed, what the heck is that?
