I met Eric for the first time when he was a teenager, though his reputation preceded him by many years. I knew he was moody, artistic and smart, and that he had “food issues.” This, according to his mother, Emily, my old college friend, who routinely filled me in on his progress. Occasionally, Emily would mention the food problem, by way of annoyance. She, a lifelong cook, would be baking some dish for the family that Eric wouldn’t touch. It didn’t fit into one of his designated food groups: Pasta, peanut butter, or milk.

By the time I met Eric, his repertoire had expanded to include some cold cereals, Sun Chips, even whole wheat bread. Finally, the notion of variety had gone beyond chunky or smooth.

Over time, Emily learned to live with Eric’s limited ways, even accommodating them. When he would go off to a weekend sporting event, she would pack jars of Skippy in his duffel bag. Was she enabling the problem, or simply feeding her son?

In the absence of his few sanctioned foods, Eric had been known to go without eating.

The pediatrician’s assurances notwithstanding, Emily was grappling with the problem, and the inherent insult of it. Here she was, a good cook ”“ and yet, her son wouldn’t eat her food.

He’ll outgrow it, the doctor promised. College, or maybe a girlfriend, will change his ways and open new culinary doors, I offered. But there he was, a high school grad, never having eaten a burger or pizza.

Sure enough, college did the trick. Eric started working out ”“ biking, running, swimming ”“ and discovered the local café on campus. He was now having sauce on his pasta ”“ all those years, he had eaten it plain. He would eat meat. Vegetables were no longer décor on the edge of a plate; he was eating beans, carrots, greens.

Then came the vacation when he arrived home and insisted on making chili. If his new forays into the kitchen were edible, their intent was more proclamatory. The boy who wouldn’t eat most foods was starting to cook, with interest, even enthusiasm.

Then, as if out of nowhere, he decided he wanted to be a chef. Seriously. Professionally. In a restaurant.

Never mind that Eric, then 20, had missed a decade or two of the usual food sampling that informs a young palate; that he had barely explored more than an aisle or two of the local supermarket, evading entire cuisines and nutritional categories; and that his knowledge base, when it came to food, was almost nil.

“He didn’t know the difference between moose and mousse,” his mother would say.

If anything, though, a clean slate merely freed him to form opinions.

“Your cooking lacks integrity,” he once scolded, upon seeing his mother use canned chicken stock.

Or there was the time he asked his mom how to prepare and cook clams. Emily grabbed a cookbook and read aloud the part about cleaning and rinsing.

“Then we lose all the flavor and authenticity of the ocean,” Eric said.

So, do we lose the earthiness of salad by washing off authentic, flavor-enhancing dirt?

Truth be told, Eric has since taken on the challenges of partridge and paté, risotto and much more. He has traveled to Italy and studied the art of pasta-making; trained at leading restaurants on both coasts. One of his former employers, a chef-restaurateur in L.A., said he wishes there were more up-and-comers like Eric, and considers him a future threat.  

One would never have predicted this course of events ”“ that a willful, artsy-athletic kid with food issues would be on track to become a professional chef. As the saying goes in the financial world, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Or, in the case at hand, Eric’s days of pasta and peanut butter are officially toast.

— Joan Silverman is a writer in Kennebunk. This article originally appeared, in slightly different form, in The Maine Sunday Telegram.