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Sad Franklin graduated? CIS 339 Principal Jason Levy just wrote to let me know about this year’s cafeteria critic, Kevasha. From one of her recent posts:

I have A LOT to say about the lunchroom
1. The only thing that is actually sort of good are the chicken, plantains, rice, mozzarella sticks.
2. Let’s not talk about the dry sandwiches and the nasty pizzas and that nasty dirty brown meat that they think is a Salisbury steak. Also, they are supposed to give us nutrition stuff but they think greasy chicken and plantains are healthy.
3. The only thing that I can consider healthy is their fruit.

There’s more, including an educational comment from Dean of Instruction David Prinstein.

Also, quick correction: Franklin is 14 and wrote his blog when he was 13, so he is not technically a pre-teen.

Last week’s “Big City” column in the New York Times tells the story of a 12-year-old aspiring food critic who adorably took himself out to dinner one night, alone, and then later wrote up a Zagat’s-style review in a private leather-bound journal. (“As I left,” the Upper West Side boy wrote, “I knew that soon enough this would be one of the most ‘hip’ places in the city.”)

The story reminds me of another aspiring food critic of about the same age: Franklin, a Bronx pre-teen who last year became the official food writer at his middle school, CIS 339. His column, called “Franklin on Food,” ran as part of the school’s online newspaper, the 339 Hardline. He reviewed the cafeteria food, which ran the gamut, from the baguette pizza (loved) to the pollo (not a fan) to the coleslaw:

Shout out to the garbage for eating all the coleslaw.

Franklin never offered ratings. (“Thank you for cooking today, dining staff. If I was going to rate you, you would have gotten a 9 out of 10. But I’m not a rater,” he wrote one day.) But he did occasionally poll his fellow students. (“I know that I have no power, so I’m just writing this to make a point and let the people’s voice be heard. 144 people didn’t like the lunch and only 6 people liked it.”)

Franklin graduated CIS 339 last year and is now in high school. But the school saved his columns, which you can read here.

(Postscript: Why are these kids writing blogs? Reminders here and here.)