It was the breaded turkey dinosaurs that finally did it. They were served to my two-year-old son Eddie by the cafe at a children's farm in the Cotswolds and they were, in every way, disgusting: they had the texture of cardboard-covered sawdust, just less of the flavour. The only similarity they had to food was that, if eaten, they wouldn't kill you, at least not immediately. Here we were, at a visitor attraction famed for its child friendliness. And yet, when it came to the matter of lunch, it presented food which seemed to me a hostile act. It seemed that way to Eddie too: he refused to eat his plate of breaded turkey dinosaurs and started howling. Too right, my son.
That is where the idea started. Too often in British restaurants and cafes the question of what children will eat is treated not as an opportunity but as a problem for which a solution must be provided. The solution is that dismal object, the children's menu: sausage and chips, fish fingers and chips, chips and chips, breaded turkey bloody dinosaurs and bloody chips. Parents, more concerned about their children eating nothing than their palate being challenged, accept the solution almost without questioning whether or not there is a possible alternative.
I'm not being preachy here. I know how frustrating it can be when your little darling pushes away the plate of food you have so lovingly created for them. Even though I know they almost always do it for just one reason - they are not hungry - it can still move me to fall back on boring favourites such as baked beans on toast. And yet I also know that children can be immensely adventurous. Eddie has been out on countless restaurant reviews with me. I have seen him stuff his gob with lumps of spiky chorizo and smokey pieces of grilled mackerel. He has fallen upon olives and anchovies, samosas and pork rillette. There is almost nothing he won't put in his mouth at least once.
It seemed to me the whole sticky question of what small children are prepared to eat needed testing. I would, therefore, take a bunch of two-year-olds to the most gastronomically ambitious restaurant in Britain. No children's menus. No compromising. They would get exactly what the inspectors from Michelin would get.
The choice of restaurant was easy. One can argue long and hard over which is the best in Britain. Is it Gordon Ramsay or Le Manoir, the Waterside Inn or Tante Claire? But the most ambitious, the most exciting, the most out there, has to be the Michelin-starred Fat Duck at Bray. Chef-patron Heston Blumenthal has been pushing back the gastronomic boundaries for a couple of years now, raising endless questions about the way we understand food: what is sweet and what is savoury? What can be combined with what and how should they be cooked? On his menu he has a pudding of smoky bacon ice cream. He mixes white chocolate with caviar. He makes sweets from beetroot and breakfast cereal from parsnips.
Although he does like to challenge us, he does not do these things to be obtuse. He does them because he believes they taste nice and - before our two-year-old restaurant critics get to work - I should say that I agree. Anybody looking for genuinely exciting food right now should get to the Fat Duck.
Heston, himself a father of three, swiftly agreed to entertain the toddlers who lunch. 'I believe children should be in restaurants,' he said simply. He could also see that there was a more general point to be made here about his food. Many of the dishes listed on his menu look odd not because they break rules - there are no rules - but because informal adult experience tells us that certain things should not be together. White chocolate and caviar, for example, goes against everything we understand. Our two-year-olds, however, are short on experience. What the hell do they know about white chocolate and caviar? Bring it on.
Choosing from Heston's extensive and increasing list of dishes we agreed only that no foie gras or veal would be served. They could make those kinds of controversial eating decisions for themselves when they are older, perhaps when they are five. Other than that, they would get the works. If you don't include the emergency pasta and quartered apple that we brought with us, their lunch comprised just the 11 courses.
And so on a cool Tuesday morning Eddie arrived at the Fat Duck along with two of his mates from nursery, the deliciously tousled Isobel - Izzy to her pals - and Harry, he of the matinee-idol looks (plus parents in tow). Although there are equally interesting social questions to be raised about having kids in restaurants - personally, like Heston, I believe they should be places for families - we agreed it would probably be easier to conduct our experiment before the lunchtime rush. We would start at 11.30am, and the three of them would be able to come and go from the table as and when they wished, to play with the toys we had brought with us. There would be no pressure.
Knowing the force with which my own son can slam a fork down on to a lovely piece of bone china, I had brought with me some plastic plates and bowls, Ikea specials, a couple of quid for six. Still, for the first dish, a green tea and lime foam, the kitchen decided to use their own delicate glass bowls because they felt the foam would sit better. It is served as a neutraliser at the beginning of every meal at the Fat Duck to remove any flavours, like the taste of toothpaste, that might be hindering the palate. Thirty seconds after the dishes arrived on the table, our experiment began with the gentle tinkling of breaking glass. Ah well, what's one glass bowl between friends?
As to the contents of that bowl - sharp, light, fresh - Eddie thought it rather terrific and spooned the lot into his trap. Harry gave it a few tries but clearly wasn't very convinced. Izzy didn't like it. A change of spoons and on to course two now, wisely, served in the plastic bowls: a tiny quenelle of sharp(though not spicy) grain mustard ice cream in a puddle of zingy red cabbage gazpacho. Again Eddie attacked it happily, although this time he did not finish it. Harry gave it a single try. Izzy was having none of it. She shouted 'lunch' in an imploring 'where is it?' kind of a way.
The third course was the most difficult of the lot: an intensely meaty pigeon jelly, with a layer of a crab-flavoured cream above and, below, a pea puree. None of them would even touch this one and a couple of the parents - who were, of course, dutifully clearing up the leftovers - weren't convinced either. Nigel Sutcliffe, the Fat Duck's general manager, said he wasn't surprised. 'It is the most challenging dish on the menu. It either scores the highest marks or the lowest.'
No matter: onwards to course four and a rich crab risotto, chosen because risottos are pretty familiar to small children. It came with a red pepper cassonade, crab ice cream and a sliver of passion fruit jelly. It was arranged on the brightly coloured plastic plates and looked fabulous. Eddie, who has never met a risotto he didn't like, swiftly laid into it. Harry had a go and, er, poor Izzy didn't like it. By now it had become pretty obvious that Izzy was no longer convinced the things that were being brought to her could be trusted to be food. Clearly, the visual was proving very important to her. This stuff simply didn't look like lunch. We shifted away from the table so they could play with a few toys and attack a little emergency pasta.
Up in the tiny, cluttered kitchen Heston's obsessive brigade were becoming hugely enthusiastic about the colours of the kids plates on to which the dishes were going: plating is an act of presentation and, as far as they were concerned, these simply added to it. 'We should restock with this stuff,' Heston said. 'Bloody cheap, no breakages, don't need polishing.' Nigel Sutcliffe agreed. 'We might lose our Michelin star,' he said. 'But we would get Ikea restaurant of the year.'
Course five, a dense meaty lasagne of langoustine with pig's trotter and a truffle sauce, was refused by all the kids. But boy, did their parents love it. 'God, this is good,' Harry's dad said. And it was. For course six, grilled sea bass in a vanilla sauce with wild mushrooms and shallots, we moved back to the table. Eddie cleaned the plate: mushrooms, fish, even the crisp skin. (That's my boy.) Harry wasn't sure. Izzy didn't like it. Back down by the toys Izzy's mum, Jan, offered her a banana. 'It really is a banana,' she said. 'I promise you. I wouldn't lie to you.' Izzy looked doubtful. Nothing was going the way it should this morning. Eventually she gave in and took it.
Course seven: pommes puree with maple syrup and tiny cubes of lime jelly. The point of this course is that, usually, it is fed by the waiters from a single spoon to the (usually adult) customers. Apart from the virtues of the curious flavour combinations, Heston says he does it because it challenges our notions of eating in a public space. 'It's shocking to ask adults to be spoon-fed,' he says. 'It couldn't be more shocking if you rushed out of the kitchen and stuck two fingers up at them.' For the kids, of course, it's just everyday life. Eddie wolfed it down in two mouthfuls. Harry wasn't sure. Izzy didn't like it.
On to the first pudding course, white chocolate and caviar buttons. Despite what experience tells us, this works because white chocolate stands up very well to a high salt content and caviar does not leave much of a fishy end. Eddie dispatched his chocolate button in three mouthfuls. Harry had about half of his. Izzy put it in her mouth - but spat it out.
Course nine: cereal made from sliced, dried, parsnips in milk infused with the flavour of the vegetable. It has a rich but soft taste, much like sweetened cornflakes. At this point, Eddie dropped out. He was not at all impressed. At the same time Harry, who was now sitting on his dad's lap, started making a low moaning sound. 'That's Harry when he's happy,' his dad said. He quickly scoffed the lot.
Harry now moved on to course 10, the smoky bacon ice cream on a tomato jelly, a kind of English breakfast for pudding, which he adored. Lumps of the ice cream - sweet but salty at the same time and definitely bacony - disappeared, courtesy of his hands, into his mouth. Eddie wasn't bothered. Izzy didn't like it.
At last the final course: a stunningly rich delice of chocolate, the base of which is filled with fizzing popping candy, like the Space Dust that was all the rage in the Seventies. Oh my: Izzy loved it! She scampered back to the table and went to work with her spoon, like a coal miner starting the day shift. This was clearly serious business as far as Izzy was concerned. There was chocolate to be eaten. Nothing else mattered. Harry piled in. Eddie didn't like it.
And the conclusion? It is true that all three children - even Eddie - rejected a number, perhaps even quite a number, of dishes. But all of them also tried and enjoyed some very sophisticated flavours. Even Izzy's chocolate delice should not be written off as kid's stuff. The body of the dish is pure cocoa bound only with egg white. There is no sugar. It is a solid, dark chocolate hit. It's the sort of thing children are not supposed to like. But, as the cover picture makes clear, Izzy really did adore it.
'A child's palate cannot lie,' Heston said at the end. He had left the kitchen occasionally throughout the meal to watch them as they tried his food, like an indulgent mother hen. 'They're not bound by some social need to be polite. Either the food stays in or it comes out.' And here a fair number of things stayed in. 'Basically I think we underestimate children.' I think so too. Never again shall I offer my son breaded turkey dinosaurs. Having eaten crab risotto and white chocolate and caviar buttons, he'd probably turn his nose up at them if I tried. God help me. I may just have created the world's first two- year-old gastronome.
