For Peg

[lsanderson]

These Kids Never Say ‘Yech!’
By ALEXANDRA ZISSU

ON Saturdays at Paradou, a small French restaurant in the meatpacking district, the bed-headed brunch crowd slogs in after noon, ready for mimosas. The morning crew is rowdier: a gaggle of apron-wearing children, mostly under 5, who come for the Mini Chef cooking lessons.

For $40 a session, pint-size cooks can learn to make dim sum, sopas and baba ghanouj. On a recent weekend, Alyssa Volland, the instructor and the wife of Alex Volland, the restaurant’s owner and chef, chose pizza for the day’s lesson. But this wasn’t a typical child-friendly pizza — frozen, on a bagel or dripping with pepperoni.

Instead, Hanna Mandel, 5, set to mixing yeast pebbles, sea salt and extra virgin olive oil into an artisanal dough, which she topped with mozzarella and a nutty, slightly stinky Gruyère before choosing a vegetable topping. As she kneaded, she talked about her No. 1 food, sushi, declaring, “Seaweed is my favorite part.”

Alyse Mandel, her mother, glanced over with the pride usually reserved for straight-A report cards, and said, “She’ll try anything.” More