Glamour shot of Flynn McGarry from the recent NYT Magazine profile

Being both a writer and a voracious eater, I work up a nerdy store of anticipation in advance of the annual food issues of The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. So there was a little twinge of disappointment in my heart when I finished the cover story from this year’s NYT Magazine offering. It’s about Flynn McGarry, a fifteen-year-old prodigy chef, who aspires to own a New York restaurant by the time he is nineteen. Am I the only one who thinks that the editorial choice to focus on this kid, above all other possible stories from the world of food, smells kind of funny? Like something just went really rotten in the crisper?

Let me be clear, before the haters get all over my case: I have never tasted anything from the kitchen of Flynn McGarry, but I have no doubt that he is very talented (and cute—he kind of has a young Harry Connick, Jr. thing going on). And I totally buy the idea of culinary prodigies being a real phenomenon; the mix of physical and conceptual skills necessary for preparing inventive haute cuisine seems similar in many ways to those celebrated in musical prodigies. And we can even leave aside the fact that every quote from his mother, Meg, made me grind my teeth in irritation, because that’s just me being a judgmental jerk.

So why do I have a bee in my bonnet about this? I think what bugs me about McGarry’s story (and maybe all child prodigies’s stories) is that it seems engineered mostly to serve adults’ delight at a high-class version of a freak show. “Hey, look, the kid who made the asparagus gelée I’m eating can’t even drive a car yet! Dance monkey dance!” It feels a little icky to me. I buy that McGarry cooks because he loves it, and it’s cool for his parents or other people in his life to encourage that love. You want to grow edible flowers and micro-lettuces in your backyard? Go for it. You want to roast a couple of goats over a fire with the owner of Alma? Knock yourself out. But why the need for an eleven-year-old to start a weekly $160-a-plate supper club patronized mostly by L.A.’s rich and famous?

Which brings us to the other underlying thread in the article that makes me uncomfortable: money. It’s breezily explained that equipment and ingredients are expensive, not to mention the globetrotting to train under famous chefs. But I think we’re kidding ourselves if we think that with a documentary, YouTube channel, blog, multiple television appearances and a proposed reality TV show, all centered on McGarry, that he will be the only one to benefit monetarily. This kid has the potential to make a bunch of people rich, and I think that potential is fueled by the fascination I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

And what is it all for, exactly? Prodigies give a lot up to nurture their talent, and maybe that’s a justifiable exchange, but often their stories don’t end happily. (I’m no expert on prodigies, certainly, though I have read a bit about musical prodigies lately.) The thing is, the word “prodigy” indicates someone who picks up advanced skills at a very early age. But it doesn’t guarantee that they’ll create anything truly groundbreaking or that other non-prodigies won’t eventually surpass them in skill; “genius” is something entirely separate from “prodigy.” Which begs the question: if a former child prodigy smokes a beet, does anyone really care?