“You know, I’m their parent, I’m not their best friend,” Mr. Marzovilla noted. “I have a duty to mold and teach.”
Olivia, the 11-year-old, was looking at the menu. “How does fried rabbit taste?” she asked.
“Very good,” advised Domenico.
Mr. Marzovilla works most evenings, but the children sit down every night at their home in SoHo with his wife, Astrid, for a meal she cooked, usually no later than 6 p.m. It’s such a given that the children do not bother trying to negotiate their way out of it.
“Some parents, it’s important to them that their kids do sports,” Mr. Marzovilla said. “To me, it doesn’t mean a thing. To have this experience with their family is more important.”
The table was not just a place to eat for a young Mr. Marzovilla — it was a place to grow. At mealtime, he literally had a seat at the table, along with the adults and his older cousins. Two of his three siblings now live nearby, and their families often join forces in Chinatown or at their mother’s home in Murray Hill, where smaller children see older ones keeping it together for the course of the meal and eating whatever is put in front of them with an open mind.
It happened at our table Sunday at I Trulli. The restaurant experience of my twin boys, who will turn 4 this summer, extends to exactly one local diner, where, yes, they have been known to eat chicken fingers and fries. At a worshipful distance across the round table, they kept their eyes trained on Julia, Olivia and Domenico. Like them, my children devoured orecchiette with rabbit ragout. When offered a clam off the shell, one asked that I remove some brown stuff at the base — and then ate it. No, he didn’t like it. But he tried it.
“If you don’t ask your children to try things, how will they ever know what they’re capable of?” Mr. Marzovilla said. “And isn’t the same true of us?”
We became human as a result of sharing food around a fire. Only wolves and Bonobos also share food.
In the last 25 years, out of millions, we have stopped this process.
Want to do the best for your kids - bring back dinner. It's more than a meal - it's where your family is formed.
HT Josh Biggley
