Ten-year-old specialist food critic

US: Eli Knauer has a ravenous appetite for seeking out the juiciest meats and sweetest desserts in Baltimore restaurants. But at just 10 years old, he is no ordinary food critic.

Standing just four feet (1.2-meter) tall, Eli may appear diminutive, but he has an expansive vocabulary with which he praises, and occasionally skewers, the eateries he visits at least once a week with his parents.

The idea for his online review column flourished during a summer vacation after he told his mother he wanted to become a food critic when he grows up and she said he needed to first start a blog.

“Adventures of a Koodie” — or a kid foodie — chronicles Eli’s take on restaurants in and around Baltimore on the US East Coast, as well as other areas he visits with his family of five.

Nearly a year and more than 50 restaurants later, Eli knows what to look for: “The juiciness in meat, sweetness in desserts and gooeyness in cheese.”

And some 120 followers now subscribe to regular updates from his blog, which has received around 43,000 page views.

Restaurateurs beware however. For Eli to reward them with his top five stars, the restaurant “has to have good food and kid-friendliness — a kids’ area or TVs or entertainment with kids’ stuff on it like cartoons or movies, kids’ meals and kid-friendly food like pizza.”

That’s not surprising for someone whose favorite food is “pizza, bacon pizza!”

His parents, Jason and Cheryl, encourage their son to keep up with his blog and critiques, noting it has helped improve his writing.

And some of his teachers check in for ideas on where to take their own children out to eat.

“If he keeps at it and he’s himself and he’s always true to himself, he’s gonna go far with it,” Jason Knauer, a local photographer, said as he sat on the front steps of their modest home in a Baltimore suburb. AFP