Who blew off Eli? Was it your assistant manager?

The Baltimore Sun is not the first media outlet to run a story on 10-year-old restaurant reviewer Eli Knauer, and it won't be last. For her story, Jill Rosen joined Eli and his family on his review outing to S'getti Eddie's in Keswick -- but that wasn't where Eli was headed for his next review.

Eli had another restaurant on the top of his review list, but that place (Restaurant X) wanted no part of it. It was an assistant manager at Restaurant X that fielded Jill Rosen's phone call requesting permission to send a Sun photographer.

Apparently he heard "kid critic" and "photographer" and assumed the worst. Jill tried to explain who Eli was and the purpose of the story, but he declined to even to pass the request along to his bosses: "They want no part of that." he told her.

I'm not saying that having your restaurant as the feel-good setting for a sweet Baltimore Sun story about a kid critic would have been like an Oprah endorsement. But it woulndn't've hurt.