On Saturday mornings, Ryan Phillips likes to take in the latest Joanne Kates review in the Globe and discuss the successes and shortcomings of the city’s hottest new restaurants at his kitchen table in High Park. His father usually reads the paper to him because Ryan, who is turning six this summer, wouldn’t know how to sound out the word “gourmet,” even if he is well on his way to becoming one. On the other side of town, in Riverdale, Olivia Baker, who has been a fan of the Food Network for nearly half her life (she is nine), is in the midst of developing a cooking show idea. In her spare time, she plays Cooking Mama—a Japanese video game that demands such virtual cooking skills as rolling out pizza dough with a stylus—on her Nintendo DS. Her mother has heard of other kids at Withrow Park playing “cooking show” with their parents, who dutifully crank the imaginary camera while the children explain the intricacies of making a roux.

Today’s celebrity chefs have a following among even the smallest fry. Susan Stockton, a Food Network executive, once remarked that she put kid-targeted cooking shows on the back burner after discovering that Emeril Lagasse and other star chefs already had a healthy following among the under-10 set. Iron Chef birthday parties, inspired by the TV show and coordinated by cooking studios, are all the rage among tweens, with teams competing to make the best dish out of such mystery ingredients as gorgonzola, arugula and star fruit. Some children now have better-looking (and more expensive) kitchen equipment than their parents: at IQ Living on the Danforth, a Rachel Ray children’s knife set costs $55.

North American kids are also dining out with their parents more often, and are exposed to an ever-greater range of cuisines. They now boast a worldliness that would have been completely foreign to their grandparents. While my father likes to recall the first time he tasted yogurt—when he moved to Paris in his 20s—these kids are learning their multiplication tables with edamame. At my daughter’s public school, Real Food for Real Kids caters the kindergarten lunch program, and the menu features such choices as grass-fed beef, bouillabaisse and organic cheese.

Yet this new level of sophistication is not as deep as we’d like to think. Parents are spending less time than ever preparing meals and eating with their children. Half the kids in my daughter’s class can’t identify an onion in its raw form. Her teacher, Alorani Martin, tells me more than 50 per cent of the class predicted they’d find seeds inside it during a science experiment. There is a wide gap between what kids have learned from dining out and their kitchen skills. Gourmet cooking classes—the suddenly trendy extracurricular activity for kids—are being marketed to fill this void. But whether these classes can deliver the goods is another story.

In the past few years, the number of cooking classes geared toward pint-sized gourmands has mushroomed into a mini-industry. They run the gamut from entertainment (making “candy sushi” by wrapping fruit leathers around cupcakes) to advanced skills (preparing real sushi). Just this spring, Culinarium, a locavore gourmet shop on Mount Pleasant, added Cooking With Kiddos to its roster of evening and weekend classes; Dish Cooking Studio has rolled out an entire children’s program, including March break camps, field trips and parties for kids as young as three.

When Stephanie Phillips, a former caterer, launched Cookerydoo in 2005, it was the first child-only cooking school in the city. Four years later, she has locations in Oakville, Leaside, Bloor West Village, Midtown and even Huntsville. Phillips, who also has a background in marketing, speaks with missionary zeal about the value of cooking classes. To hear her tell it, signing up is the best thing you can do for your child: he will learn math, science, co-operation. Classes will boost his self-esteem and lead to healthier eating habits. Not to mention a marked improvement in manners and presentation.

Tracey Manne, the chef-owner of Rising Chefs’ Cooking School, opened her doors early last year. The former Four Seasons cook treats students like little chefs, expecting them to do everything except the hot work. Preschoolers are surprisingly adept with their knives (albeit brightly coloured plastic ones), chopping up peaches for a streusel tart. Tall white toques make five-year-olds look—and, one imagines, feel—much older and more responsible than their years. The instructor, who prowls around the industrial kitchen in chef’s whites looking like a modern-day Escoffier, employs clever tricks to make recipes kid-friendly—instead of throwing fruit into a blender, for example, he might put it into a Ziploc and get the kids to pulp the fruit by squeezing the bag. “We learned quickly not to limit them,” says Manne.