Robyn Sewitz is almost done flipping through the latest Bon Appétit this Sunday afternoon when she makes a discovery she just has to share with her son. Brushing back a lock of her auburn hair, she calls to him across her spacious kitchen. “Jon,” she says, “here’s boar hunting for beginners!”

“Oh yeah?” he says, halting his knife’s progress. Several weeks shy of his 16th birthday, Jon is tall and lean, his full cheeks not yet ready for their first serious shave, but after all those months he’s spent studying cookbooks, mastering culinary modernism, and apprenticing in professional kitchens, he’s a more capable cook than either of his parents will ever be. Jon’s a sophomore at the Oakwood School, a private progressive academy in North Hollywood. His mother is a psychotherapist, while his father, David, designs furniture and window treatments for clients of enormous net worth.

Like many Oakwood parents, the Sewitzes regard their child’s artistic ambitions not as some passing teenage fancy but as a creative flowering that could lead to great things. When Jon thought he wanted to be a musician, they signed him up for lessons and invested in a Bellafina double bass. He plays in the school orchestra and jazz band, but much of the time now his instrument sits on its side in the deserted music parlor of their Encino home, like a dejected mastiff.

Jon’s food epiphany came during a family trip to Spain a couple of years ago. Robyn wasn’t trying to make a chef out of him when she booked dinner reservations at El Celler de Can Roca, which earned three stars in the 2011 Michelin Guide. She wanted to expose him to something that would pique his interest more than the art museums were. Jon’s palate still carries the sensations of that meal: oysters served in the bottom half of a wine bottle with carbonated cava sauce; eggplant soufflé wrapped in white sardines; a lineup of mussels, one bathed in bergamot foam, another in nectarine jelly a...