Mini-foodie perks in Nick Magazine: Moto for the 10-year-old set
The latest Nick Magazine for Kids has an article this month titled "Off the Eaten Track". It features six restaurants - the header line is:
If eating out doesn't seem that exciting anymore, consider having your next meal at one of these eccentric eateries.
Stuck In with the other places in the article which vary from a restaurant where one dines while sitting on toilets to a place where one dines underwater, there is
Moto .
This seemed interesting to me. Though I'm not quite sure in what way. :)
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12 Comments:
Well, yes. Of course I had to post the link to Moto twice.
The second link was really supposed to be this one .
Karen Resta at 10:19AM on 11/11/07
After much thoughtful deliberation I've figured out how I feel about Moto being in Nickelodeon magazine.
It actually frightens me.
I rue the day when my son or daughter walks up to me at any age under the age of consent (when hopefully they will be able to pay for the dinner themselves rather than me treating them) to say - as the magazine says - "Mom, eating out doesn't seem that exciting anymore. Take me to Moto please."
That's my response as a Mom.
As a food snob, my other response is that Moto as a restaurant does not belong in the same category as the others listed in the article with it. Those restaurants rely on architectural or design gimmicks to make their creative point. The point is not made within the food itself. As a food snob, I think Moto stands alone in this group of restaurants as being a truly "meaningful" experience within the lines drawn of food as art within the act of dining.
But mostly I'm just figuring out how many years of Nick magazine subscriptions I'll have to cancel in order to pay for three dinners in Chicago at $165 a pop.
Karen Resta at 12:19PM on 11/12/07
Hee! The writer of the piece, Steven Stern, is actually a pretty darned serious food fan/writer (and a good friend of mine). He writes food stuff for the grown ups as well as for the Nick crowd, so I suppose his worlds are bound to collide.
katkinsman at 5:36PM on 11/13/07
You know, I still remember the first time I was taken to ballet. The magical performance of "The Tempest" we attended while at Girl Scout camp. The attempt to make us fans of nuclear energy at a now infamous plant and the grilled, buttery mushrooms garnishing my plate that taught me I could change my mind about what was good to eat.
I can't say I ever had a moment of profound enlightenment or visceral excitement while leafing through a magazine written for children, but I suppose there might be a kid or two out there who would find Moto unbelieveably cool (or "hot") and might be inspired to learn how to cook, or ask for a chemistry set, or at the very least, grow up in the belief that artistry happens in the kitchen. Or that doing things that are odd and different can be a virtue and not just an object of scorn.
That said, bring on the kids. What do yours think about the pictures on Moto's web site? (The music scares even me.) Do they want to eat their bedtime stories? Feed their homework to the dogs?
Eliz. at 6:42PM on 11/13/07
There's a choice to be made here (after remembering that indeed worlds do collide and writing is a thing done by people who pay bills by doing it and the worst thing in the world is not to have a child who wants to be taken to the ballet or to Moto, bien sur) by a parent reading the sorts of enticements or entertainment or intelligence given in children's magazines and children's television.
The choice (in my mind anyway) often comes down to flash and cash or still cool but unfueled by a certain sort of glitter. The mask or the unadorned. Paris Hilton-style or . . . goodness I'll have to go back more than a few years and she even aggravates me somewhat but I have to use her as example - sigh - Marlo Thomas.
Lots of kids today are interested in cooking and in the artistry within it. It's not that different right now for a kid to be this way, so though that is a point well taken I'm not sure of the full value of it in this case, except as how a thing is presented can shape it to be full of more reality or not so much of the full reality of a thing.
My reaction is mostly against creating kidfoodies who revere the celebrity chef and the tasting menu that most people in the world will not be able to enjoy without showing the reality of what working in most kitchens really is all about, including the payscale and hours involved.
But this is a mass-media magazine, Nickelodeon, and this is what it does - it sells things to parents whose children are taken by the whiz-bam-slam of it. I don't know any parent who is not bombarded daily by the requests for things that their younger and younger children "need" such as iPods; cellphones with web-browsing capability; and Abercrombie (god I remember when they were an old stuffy WASP store with fishing lures on the main floor!) jeans for seven year olds with twenty-foot high photos of them in front of the store capering as if they were Fabulous Fabio (who I just read a story about where two distinct birds at different times have flown directly into his head thereby hurting his nose, killing themselves, while apaprently trying to nest on him) . . . what I'm trying to say is that while Moto is a fun thing in a way, and while certainly the artistry of foods such as Moto can be a wonderful inspiration to anyone, I'd rather my kids just be kids rather than mini-connoisseurs.
Let them learn to make spaghetti and meatballs, for example (even though it is not a "real" Italian recipe nonetheless it is a recipe of the people here for sure) before they start whining "Mom, eating out doesn't seem that exciting anymore." If eating out for a ten year old is not that exciting anymore, then they need to learn to cook something themselves that excites them. They do not need to be taken to Moto.
Pah.
And of course my kids want to go to Moto.
Karen Resta at 7:29PM on 11/13/07
And please forgive my misspelling of 'apparently'. Thinking of Fabio's nose obviously affects my language capabilities.
Karen Resta at 7:35PM on 11/13/07
Aw heck - I don't actually really need to be taken to Moto. I just reallyreallyreally want to be.
(More with Fabio's mose: http://galleryoftheabsurd.typepad.com/14/2007/11/fabio.html)
katkinsman at 4:23PM on 11/15/07
Sometimes I think restaurants (of a certain sort) are the new Disneyland.
Rhetorical question: If a restaurant were designed to look like Fabio, would the kids flock to it? If they didn't who would and where would the best seats be?
Karen Resta at 6:45AM on 11/16/07
Actually (just let me keep adding more comments to my own topic, it makes me feel so accomplished in a backwards sort of way) to move away from FabioLand for a moment (a scary place) I wonder if Moto is serving a special Thanksgiving menu.
Fun to imagine what that would be.
Karen Resta at 7:04AM on 11/16/07
>>Rhetorical question: If a restaurant were designed to look like Fabio, would the kids flock to it? If they didn't who would and where would the best seats be?
Not so much kids as Romance Readers, and the best seats would be nestled within the taut, tender crevasse between his rigorously waxed man-bosoms, or possibly 'neath the tangled, tawny waterfall of his untamed locks.
Nowhere near his pants, for they may burst aflame at any moment.
katkinsman at 5:20PM on 11/26/07
Ha, ha, ha!
A restaurant designed for Romance Readers! I love it.
Place it in a big shiny mall somewhere in middle America - Cincinnati (the name even sounds right) and have the furniture designed as you so aptly describe above. Molded high-quality poly-something-or-other, lovingly silkscreened to resemble the "real thing". Banquettes, individual seats, tables . . . the servers would be head-hunted from Abercrombie's across the mall floor and the food would be listed in two foot high purple velvet gold and rhinestone trimmed menus with entrees that promise to hold aphrodisiac qualities. Forget the entrees. My goodness, that place would sell desserts.
There's a fabulous bathroom in a DC restaurant Mie en Yu with a close to perfect design for this theme - you walk down an exotic-seeming set of stairs into a dark, romantic, candlelit slightly strange (particularly after a couple of glasses of good wine) room with a bare-chested man standing near this copper cistern thing who offers to wash your hands for you.
Aaaaah! I love it.
Excuse me. Must go make dinner. Still trying to keep the kid's minds off Moto.
Karen Resta at 6:20PM on 11/26/07
Hee! The writer of the piece, Steven Stern, is actually a pretty darned serious food fan/writer (and a good friend of mine). He writes food stuff for the grown ups as well as for the Nick crowd, so I suppose his worlds are bound to collide.
katkinsman at 5:36PM on 11/13/07
katkinsman (if you happen to check in and see this post) I am curious. Is this Steven Stern the same person as this Steven Stern ?
Karen Resta at 8:32AM on 01/03/08