Vivian Lee grew up outside of New York City where she was often ridiculed for bringing Korean dishes, like seaweed soup and kimchi, to school for lunch. Now the owner of Leftie Lee’s bakery in Avondale Estates, she launched a summer camp for kids in 2024 to inspire a new generation of food enthusiasts, including her own daughter.
“Knowing that a lot of kids don’t even have culinary programs anymore, I thought this is something we could do to build a little bit of interest around food for kids at a young age,” said Lee. She’s one of many parents and educators in Atlanta working to introduce kids to international cuisines and the cultures they come from. Through cooking classes and hands-on experiences, Atlantans are raising adventurous eaters.
At Leftie Lee’s cooking camp, chef Patrick Ratanapunna of the pop-up Orange Lion taught his young students how to make kanom jeeb (Thai dumplings) with a pork filling. “The kids got their hands all messy, and it was really fun to see,” said Ratanapunna. “They treated it like Play-Doh.” Then they shaped the dumplings, and while they weren’t perfect, the young students eagerly ate them. “When I talked about food when I was a kid, to my other fellow classmates, they’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s weird,’” Ratanapunna recalled. “Here, no kid thought that was weird. Every kid was excited about the entire process from dumpling to dessert, to even the snacks that I shared.”
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
There are nutritional benefits to introducing kids to global cuisines. When children eat from a narrow range of foods or cuisines, they may miss out on important vitamins, minerals and gut-friendly ingredients like kimchi. “I think the more types of cuisines that we can enjoy (will) strengthen our microbiome,” said Nimali Fernando, a pediatrician in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and founder of the Dr. Yum Project. “For kids, that’s important because they’re out in the world spreading germs and they’re exposed to a lot of different pathogens in schools.”
At Woodward Academy, a prekindergarten through twelfth grade private school, food is often at the center of experiential learning. During Maymester, a weeklong program held at the end of the school year, students explore topics through hands-on activities and field trips. One course, “Yin-Yang: Chinese Food, Tea and Tai Chi,” included a visit to a Chinese supermarket followed by cooking traditional dishes and sampling teas and snacks.
Another class focused on cuisine from Spanish-speaking countries and featured hands-on cooking and local restaurant visits. “Food has the power to transcend borders and cultures, connecting us in ways that language and other forms of communication may not,” said Jaimie Spetseris, Woodward’s director of global connections. “The history and complexity of a culture can be shared through ritual, taste and tradition.”
Your child doesn’t have to attend private school to experience Atlanta’s global fare. Sarah Park, who lives in Duluth and leads the Seoul of the South tours for Explore Gwinnett, prioritized introducing her 3- and 9-year-old children to international foods. “We go to Hispanic supermarkets or to Chinese markets, because those are different from Korean ones or our traditional Kroger or Costco,” she said.
Park points out different ingredients, helps her kids find recipes and makes an event out of cooking with them. For Park, this means more than just broadening her kids’ palates. “I think having more of that meaningful conversation at your home table and outside of home is a really joyful and natural way to bring them in and raise them to be good humans and good citizens,” said Park.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Grace Mendez, general manager of Hotel Clermont, said that when her nearly 2-year-old daughter Margot started eating solid foods, Mendez and her husband made a list of foods they wanted her to try. “Our big thing is no matter where we go, she’s going to eat whatever we eat, just a smaller portion of it,” Mendez said.
They’ve feasted on soup dumplings at Northern China Eatery along with other dishes up and down Buford Highway. Mendez also takes her shopping at Talpa Supermercados, a Hispanic grocery chain with several locations in Georgia and Tennessee. “She picks out her tamales from the hot bar and she loves plantains,” Mendez said.
Credit: Brandon McKeown
Credit: Brandon McKeown
There are other ways to inspire children. At Flour Power Cooking Studios, with locations in Alpharetta and east Cobb, kids can take cooking classes specializing in subjects like “A Taste of the Mediterranean” and “Spice Routes” which introduces dishes from India and North Africa. The company Raddish Kids encourages children to cook at home with globally inspired recipe kits, like the “Comida Argentina” box, which includes illustrated recipes, a kitchen tool and discussion prompts.
Fernando’s advice to parents is simple: Cook with them and model curiosity. “It doesn’t mean parents have to have certain food preferences, but they can model a curiosity around food,” she said. “Maybe we don’t love it, maybe it’s not our favorite, but we’re curious about it and willing to try and practice.”
A city as diverse as Atlanta is the perfect place to feed that curiosity — and help shape its future global citizens, one soup dumpling at a time.
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