Last week, the 39-year-old executive chef and co-owner of Blue Hill in Greenwich Village and Westchester’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns (and nominee for outstanding chef at tonight's James Beard Foundation Awards) found his name printed among those of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Tiger Woods, Arianna Huffington, Tina Fey and the founders of Twitter, to name just a few, when Time magazine released its annual 100 World's Most Influential People list. ("His ethics ... are a model for all chefs and all those who love good food," Time noted.)

“Had it been 10 years ago—and this isn’t false modesty—I just don’t think that I would have been available for this award," said Mr. Barber. "What I’m representing is really a much stronger consciousness and awareness that’s allowing people like me to have more of a voice. So I’m flattered, but I also know it’s a sign of the times.”

It was Saturday afternoon, May 2, and Mr. Barber was at a high school in Park Slope talking about sustainable eating.

A leader in the local food movement here in New York—most of what is served in both Blue Hills is grown or raised on an 80-acre farm adjacent to the Westchester location (it doubles as an agricultural education center)—Mr. Barber's appearance was perhaps the main attraction of the inaugural Brooklyn Food Conference, which organizers said drew several thousand attendees.

“Do you think more people will start growing vegetables because Michelle Obama has planted a garden on the White House lawn?” asked WNYC’s Leonard Lopate, who moderated a panel called “Our sustainable restaurants: A roundtable of NYC chefs,” which included Mr. Barber and fellow Manhattan power chefs/greenmarket regulars Peter Hoffman of Savoy and Telepan’s Bill Telepan.

“I actually do,” Mr. Barber replied amid a bit of laughter from the audience. “I don’t know if it’s going to translate into more people actually growing their own food. But I do think it will translate into more people thinking about cooking with the kind of food that she’s growing. That’s key to reiterating that the chef’s role, aside from providing delicious food and having people think about the connections to where that food is from, is also to inspire people to actually cook.”

After the panel concluded, the Daily Transom managed to get a word in with Mr. Barber before he was swarmed by a few dozen of the crunchy foodies who had filled the John Jay High School auditorium to hear him speak.

We couldn’t help but wonder if Mr. Barber was concerned that, as the recession tightens its grip, more and more New Yorkers might not be able to afford to eat ethically at his restaurants, especially Blue Hill at Stone Barns, where a five-course tasting menu will run you close to $100.

“It’s always a concern because this kind of food is special, but my answer in terms of Blue Hill at Stone Barns is that it’s a free public access facility, so you could come at 9 in the morning on a Saturday, enjoy a little breakfast at the cafe very cheap, have a free tour of the farm, a light lunch, another class in the afternoon, sit down for dinner and enjoy a multi-course menu, and at the end of the day end up spending around $200,” he said. “It’s a lot cheaper than going to Disneyland.”

“I just knew I had to try it,” he said, still sounding a bit awed.

Back in the city that evening, Mr. Bunger, who is decidedly not a vegetarian (he’s from Texas), roasted the squash, which had cost $3.50, with brown sugar and butter. Then he made a purée with the leftovers. It was a veritable feast, he said.

Only 10 years ago, Manhattan was gripped with meat fever: stockbrokers chomping on steaks; chefs competing to see who could offer the most unusual offal; magazine editors slavishly following the diktat of Dr. Atkins (some getting bad breath in the process). These days, the opposite is true. In some of the city’s finest restaurants, vegetables are getting more room on the dish, at times even taking center stage. The corner butcher gently guiding a housewife through her first pot roast now seems quaint; these days we have a legion of househusbands prowling the farmer’s markets, gawking at the cauliflower and palpating the parsnips.

Could it be that vegetables are the new meat?

“I like the sound of that!” said Alex Paffenroth, owner of Paffenroth Gardens, said to have the best produce at the Union Square Greenmarket.

It was a frigid Wednesday morning in mid-November, and Mr. Paffenroth, a burly man of 64, was standing at the back of his box truck in the market’s northeast corner, flipping through pink carbon-copied receipts of vegetable orders from restaurants including Five Points, Telepan, Savoy, Blue Hill and Gramercy Tavern, whose purveyors had already stopped by to claim the day’s bounty. His daughter, 32-year-old Deanne, of Williamsburg, was ringing up customers in front of a portable space heater.

“The real rush will start around lunchtime,” she said.

The place was filled with real men, not bloodless hippies in hemp shirts.

Gary Liliean, 48, a farmer’s market regular wearing a black coat and a baseball cap, placed a plastic bag filled with 3 pounds’ worth of fingerling potatoes (a side dish for Thanksgiving dinner) down on the scale.

“It’s fun!” said Mr. Liliean, who runs a lighting rental department, of his weekly trips to the greenmarket. “You wander around. It’s like impulse shopping.”

Standing nearby with a sizable parsnip in each hand was Joe Beshenkovsky, a 32-year-old TV editor who lives in the West Village. Mr. Beshenkovsky still eats meat, but started making vegetables the cornerstone of his diet about three years ago. He said he wanted to eat more healthfully, and preempt becoming “egregiously fat.” He visits the farmer’s market twice a week to stock up on produce.

“These puppies?” he said, proudly holding up the two tubers as if to show off his catch, “I’ll either bake ’em for dinner or toss them in the microwave for a snack.”  

POWER BROKER ON THE PLATE

A 2004 survey conducted by the city health department found that 90 percent of New Yorkers eat fewer than five servings of vegetables or fruit per day, a spokeswoman for the bureau pointed out.

But 2004 was also the year that Thomas Keller’s Per Se burst  on the scene, with its forest mizuna and field mushrooms. In his four-star review, New York Times critic Frank Bruni praised the restaurant’s nine-course vegetable tasting (now $275)—“of all things,” he marveled, adding, “Lobster is easy; potato salad is hard.”

Meanwhile, “locavorism,” which posits that everyone should eat food produced within 50 to 100 miles of their homes for environmental reasons, has gone mainstream; The Oxford American Dictionary named “locavore” its word of the year for 2007. Initially perceived as a way of life for patchouli-soaked do-gooders, the movement has gotten a considerable PR boost from food-world notables like journalist-author Michael Pollan (“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”) and celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse—yes, the same man known for his testosterone-soaked “BAMS!”

Last spring, Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed legislation issuing 1,000 permits for produce-only food carts in low-income areas where fresh vegetables and fruit are not easy to come by. Marcel Van Ooyen, executive director of the Council on the Environment of New York City, said that about 20 of the organization’s 46 greenmarkets just opened in the past three years. And the number of farmer’s markets statewide has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, said Jessica Chittenden, a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Agriculture.

“People are looking for more rare and exotic produce,” said Ms. Chittenden. “So we’ve seen an increase in the diversity of produce our farmers are growing; more heirloom varieties and things that may not have fit a niche back when people were just looking for the roundest, reddest tomatoes.”

Top New York chefs agree.

“People are more aware of what’s going on with the local veggie scene,” said Bill Telepan, owner of the Upper West Side restaurant Telepan. “It’s become more popular to buy from the greenmarket than it ever has been, and because the greenmarkets seem to be getting bigger and better, now chefs are able to have veggies play a more prominent role.”

Indeed, there’s plenty of room for them on Mr. Telepan’s menu, which includes fried artichokes, autumn vegetable bread soup, roasted cauliflower, chickpea pancakes, beet green and ricotta pierogis, and buttercup squash gnocchi.  

“This consciousness about, ‘Who’s growing what? Where’s it coming from? What variety is it?’ These are questions people weren’t asking 10 years ago,” said Dan Barber, executive chef and co-owner of Blue Hill, whose Web site lures diners with images not of sizzling meat, but colorful vegetables sprouting from soil and vine. Blue Hill’s fall menus include entrees and/or tastings of cauliflower steak, brussel sprouts and pistachios, Bloomsdale spinach, celery root, Orion fennel and Forono beets, to name a few.

Mr. Barber, whose “almond carrots,” foodies will recall, were all the rage last year, said that because the farm-to-table movement has made people “more interested about what’s going on their plate,” chefs have become more confident about veggies being the star.

“It’s brought about the rise of the vegetable as a power broker on the plate,” he said.

BEET ME, DARLING

Of course there’s a more obvious reason to opt for veggies when dining out: In an economy where even well off New Yorkers are cutting back on their morning trips to Starbucks, it never hurts to save a few bucks.

“Restaurants are looking for a way to put less expensive items on their menus,” said Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio, founder and co-owner of Craft, which, he noted, offers an array of vegetable-based courses priced below their meaty counterparts. “You can come in and just order vegetables and make a meal out of it. We will see more of that.”

At Gramercy Tavern, the popular contemporary American restaurant Mr. Colicchio co-founded in 1994 but is no longer affiliated with, the vegetable tasting menu, which currently includes heirloom cauliflower, Jerusalem artichoke soup, fennel and lemon risotto and a butternut squash and kale-based ravioli, will run you $92, as opposed to the meat-heavy autumn tasting menu ($112).

“It’s very satisfying to see a rising number of sales of the vegetable tasting,” said Michael Anthony, Gramercy’s executive chef.

There is a happy medium between these high-end places and, say, DoJo, the longtime Village refuge of cheap carrot salads. The menu at the downtown comfort food joint Westville East recently enticed Alexis Saarela, a 29-year-old publicity manager from Queens, when she met a friend there for a post-work dinner. For $13 she got cauliflower, pesto mashed potatoes, broccoli rabe and artichokes (there are about 20 veggies total; diners may choose four).

“It was really tasty and they were vegetables I wouldn’t normally think to buy or cook with,” said Ms. Saarela, who has no problem eating meat. “It’s nice to have an option where you feel like you’re getting fresh seasonal ingredients.”

New York carnivores squeamish about handling a bloody slab in their own kitchens, meanwhile, can now comfortably explore the cooking craze using vegetables alone, with no stigma. No longer is the bachelor cook expected to inflame his lady with a sizzling steak Diane.

Back at the Union Square Greenmarket, the entirely macho Michael Coury, 40, who works as a “concept chef” for OTG Management, was rifling through a crate of black Tuscan kale to accompany the chestnut flour pasta, Jerusalem artichokes and beets he planned to cook that evening for a romantic dinner back home in Jersey City with his fiancée.

“I think we’ve started to come back to more of a European palate in the way that we go out to the market to find what’s best for right now. For tonight,” he said. 

Those without the patience for such foraging can join community-supported agriculture groups, or CSAs: networks of individuals who buy shares in a farm in return for a weekly delivery—usually to a central neighborhood location—of fresh vegetables and fruit (and yes, in some cases meat). You never know what you’re gonna get.

Williamsburg resident Angela Gaimari, 26, joined a CSA last June. Previously she’d been eating a bagel for breakfast, a cheeseburger or sushi for lunch and maybe pizza for dinner.

“It was like, ‘Wow, I haven’t eaten vegetables in a really long time!’” she said. “I just started craving leafy greens.”

Ms. Gaimari, a copywriter for a high-end New York department store, said her most recent shipment (also the last of the season) included dinosaur kale, mustard greens, brazing greens, white radishes, various roots, garlic, sweet potatoes and fingerling potatoes. The cost for 11 such shipments with some fruit and flowers thrown in for good measure: $500.

“Cooking and having people over is a lot more fun to me than going out to some bar in Williamsburg,” said Ms. Gaimari. “I take a lot of pride in picking out vegetables.”

jpompeo@observer.com

The Penguin Press, one of the most prestigious publishers of non-fiction in town, is a logical home for Mr. Barber, a vocal advocate of sustainable agriculture and locally-grown food whose intellectual predelictions are not dissimilar from those of Michael Pollan, who is also published there.

As we reported last month, the book Mr. Barber wants to write will be comprised of stories about “all the different farmers and characters” he’s met over the course of his career as a chef, all of which will, taken together, form one coherent narrative. When we interviewed him, Mr. Barber also told us that he wants to write a cookbook, but at this point that project is not formally on the docket.

Mr. Black would not disclose how much money Mr. Barber would be getting for the book. He said that although a lot of publishers saw the proposal and wanted to publish the book, he did not hold a formal auction because Mr. Barber felt such an "editorial connection" with Penguin Press publisher Ann Godoff.

Mr. Black said Mr. Barber would take "a few years" to write the book, meaning readers shouldn't expect it on shelves before 2010.

These informal kitchen chats have been happening with some regularity since Blue Hill opened, but in recent weeks, the relationship between braininess and Berkshire pork has become more official. Mr. Barber recently signed with high-powered literary agent David Black—the two of them first met when Mr. Black came to eat at Blue Hill—and together, they have been shopping a couple of ideas to publishing houses around town.

According to Mr. Barber, the meetings he and Mr. Black have taken so far have been purely exploratory. “I don’t have a formal proposal,” he said. “I don’t even know what a formal proposal is!”

Instead, he explained, he submitted to editors what is essentially a magazine article not so different in pace or form from his recent piece in The New York Times Magazine about trying to naturally breed almond-flavored carrots. The book he envisions would be comprised of a bunch of these essays—taken together, he said, they would amount to a narrative about the culture of eating and sustainable agriculture as expressed through stories about “all the different farmers and characters” whom he’s met over the course of his career as a chef.

Mr. Barber also wants to write a cookbook that focuses as much on where ingredients come from and how they are harvested as it does on what to do with them in the kitchen. “It’s meant for the home cook,” Mr. Barber said. “It’s not meant to say that in order to have this meal you have to grow your own carrots.”

It’s unclear when these books will have a publisher; Mr. Black would not comment for this story, agreeing only to confirm that he and Mr. Barber are working together. But unless someone goes for an early preempt, a heated auction is likely and, if industry insiders are to be believed, a deal should be done by next month before all of New York publishing leaves for the London Book Fair.

Three Stars

75 Washington Place

(Between Sixth Avenue and Washington Square Park)

212-539-1776

Dress: Casual

Lighting: Soft

Noise Level: Low

Wine List: Unusual selections from small vineyards, reasonable prices

Credit Cards: All major

Price Range: Main courses, $28 to $32

Dinner: Monday through Saturday, 5:30 to 11 p.m.; Sunday, 5:30 to 10 p.m.

On a recent Sunday evening, my friends arrived at Blue Hill early and fell into conversation at the bar with a professor and a high-school teacher. The small dining room is warm and intimate, with a low ceiling and bare brick walls, and chocolate-brown banquettes with raised backs act as sound buffers. It’s normally rather sedate, but tonight some young women at a nearby table were becoming increasingly boisterous. The teacher finally lost patience. “Shhhh!” she hissed. The entire restaurant fell stone silent.

Blue Hill is just around the corner from New York University, so many of its customers—and it has a loyal following of regulars—must be well used to hushing or being hushed. The restaurant is in a former speakeasy in the basement of a townhouse near Washington Square. Tables are covered with white paper over linen, and the staff wears long white bistro aprons and blue shirts. The casual style doesn’t prepare you for the high caliber of the cooking here. Perhaps that’s why Blue Hill is underrated. Chef/owner Dan Barber and chef Juan Cuevas (who was formerly at Lespinasse and Alain Ducasse), are producing a sophisticated modern cuisine that’s on a par with some of the city’s best restaurants.

When Mr. Barber first opened Blue Hill five years ago, he created an ambitious seasonal menu with produce from greenmarkets and his family farm in Massachusetts. Last year, he opened a sister restaurant at Stone Barns on the Rockefeller estate up the Hudson, just 24 miles north of the city. The farm there now supplies both restaurants with virtually all of their produce, meat, eggs, poultry and even honey.

My friends and I sat down at a corner banquette near the bar and ordered a glass of this year’s hit wine, the Basque Txakolina, pale gold and slightly fizzy, served in a thin-rimmed tumbler as an aperitif. Blue Hill’s wine list is short but interesting, with many choices from lesser-known vineyards, and the prices are reasonable. The terrific sommelier guided us to a Kuhling-Gillot Scheurebe Kabinett from Rheinhessen, a fruity wine that perfectly complemented our food. The staff is well informed, too—although sometimes you might learn more than you wish. “Our veal tonight is baby veal, brought up by its mother, who has only been fed on grass …. ”

We began with a taste of soup delivered in shot glasses—the “last of the tomatoes,” the waitress said sadly. These late-harvest tomatoes had been roasted and smoked over wood chips before being puréed into a wonderful soup. The waitress set down a small wooden board that had two rows of thin, communion-like wafers slatted into it. “They are baked with ‘fifth-generation’ garlic.” Of course. (The garlic is named, in fact, for an Italian immigrant who brought over a highly prized sweet specimen; the family would only sell it chopped or peeled so that no one else could grow it. When the last farmer retired, he gave his bulbs to Mr. Barber.)

After the soup, I had a plate of exquisite tiny fall vegetables—variously raw, marinated or flash-cooked over high heat—mingled with toasted pistachios, fresh soybeans, apples and fennel in a mushroom gelée. It was permeated with the aroma of purple basil and was unbelievably good. So was a warm wild-mushroom and chicken-liver salad with baby greens and toasted pistachios in a herbaceous pine-nut vinaigrette.

Mr. Cuevas has worked in top restaurants in Spain, and he brings subtle Spanish touches to some of the dishes. Slices of foie gras (not raised on the farm) come on a green glass plate accompanied by puntarelle (wild chicory), fennel, tapioca and apple, with a Prosecco vinaigrette and toasted Marcona almonds. It’s light and refined, with a lemony sweetness—the last thing you’d expect with foie gras. Fluke arrived in a big white bowl with honmichi mushrooms, fennel, chopped herbs and fennel fronds floating in an intense, clear broth made from tomato, zucchini and cucumber water, drained in a cheesecloth. Three smoked shrimp were plopped on a bright green lawn of puréed herbs sprinkled with “panther” soybeans. Cod, an all-white dish, was served in a creamy almond shellfish broth, laced with strips of zucchini and Marcona almonds.

Mr. Barber and Mr. Cuevas like tart, citrusy tastes. The crabmeat salad, with mint and cilantro, micro greens, green-tomato marmalade and diced apple was pure heaven. The Berkshire pork was wonderful, but the bitterness of an arugula and mustard-herb pesto served with it didn’t set off the meat to the best advantage. I loved the tiny, tiny lamb chops, with tiny, tiny potatoes, cannellini beans and lettuce, along with a dollop of braised leg and shoulder. Cobia, a large white fish with meaty, firm-textured flesh, came with colorful twin sauces, a rich purple Concord grape cooked with roast lobster shells and port, and a yellow pepper sauce.

Blue Hill serves a great chocolate brioche bread pudding with roast peanuts and salted caramel in the middle. The apple cobbler is deconstructed: The apples come in a Mason jar, and the crumble is served on the side. Seckel pears poached with caramel were laced with a passion-fruit sauce that kicked the pears into action. A dark chocolate soufflé with ricotta ice cream was a little dry but had great flavors. The fromage blanc soufflé was flawless, with pink peppercorn ice cream. Tiny fresh pears at the peak of ripeness were served as petits fours alongside chocolate truffles.

As we were finishing our marvelous desserts, the women from the once-raucous table got up to leave. The schoolteacher was at the table next to us, and one of the culprits stopped in front of her and glared. “Next time you come here, take a Valium!”

Everyone laughed.

Three Stars

75 Washington Place

(Between Sixth Avenue and Washington Square Park)

212-539-1776

Dress: Casual

Lighting: Soft

Noise Level: Low

Wine List: Unusual selections from small vineyards, reasonable prices

Credit Cards: All major

Price Range: Main courses, $28 to $32

Dinner: Monday through Saturday, 5:30 to 11 p.m.; Sunday, 5:30 to 10 p.m.

On a recent Sunday evening, my friends arrived at Blue Hill early and fell into conversation at the bar with a professor and a high-school teacher. The small dining room is warm and intimate, with a low ceiling and bare brick walls, and chocolate-brown banquettes with raised backs act as sound buffers. It’s normally rather sedate, but tonight some young women at a nearby table were becoming increasingly boisterous. The teacher finally lost patience. “Shhhh!” she hissed. The entire restaurant fell stone silent.

Blue Hill is just around the corner from New York University, so many of its customers—and it has a loyal following of regulars—must be well used to hushing or being hushed. The restaurant is in a former speakeasy in the basement of a townhouse near Washington Square. Tables are covered with white paper over linen, and the staff wears long white bistro aprons and blue shirts. The casual style doesn’t prepare you for the high caliber of the cooking here. Perhaps that’s why Blue Hill is underrated. Chef/owner Dan Barber and chef Juan Cuevas (who was formerly at Lespinasse and Alain Ducasse), are producing a sophisticated modern cuisine that’s on a par with some of the city’s best restaurants.

When Mr. Barber first opened Blue Hill five years ago, he created an ambitious seasonal menu with produce from greenmarkets and his family farm in Massachusetts. Last year, he opened a sister restaurant at Stone Barns on the Rockefeller estate up the Hudson, just 24 miles north of the city. The farm there now supplies both restaurants with virtually all of their produce, meat, eggs, poultry and even honey.

My friends and I sat down at a corner banquette near the bar and ordered a glass of this year’s hit wine, the Basque Txakolina, pale gold and slightly fizzy, served in a thin-rimmed tumbler as an aperitif. Blue Hill’s wine list is short but interesting, with many choices from lesser-known vineyards, and the prices are reasonable. The terrific sommelier guided us to a Kuhling-Gillot Scheurebe Kabinett from Rheinhessen, a fruity wine that perfectly complemented our food. The staff is well informed, too—although sometimes you might learn more than you wish. “Our veal tonight is baby veal, brought up by its mother, who has only been fed on grass …. ”

We began with a taste of soup delivered in shot glasses—the “last of the tomatoes,” the waitress said sadly. These late-harvest tomatoes had been roasted and smoked over wood chips before being puréed into a wonderful soup. The waitress set down a small wooden board that had two rows of thin, communion-like wafers slatted into it. “They are baked with ‘fifth-generation’ garlic.” Of course. (The garlic is named, in fact, for an Italian immigrant who brought over a highly prized sweet specimen; the family would only sell it chopped or peeled so that no one else could grow it. When the last farmer retired, he gave his bulbs to Mr. Barber.)

After the soup, I had a plate of exquisite tiny fall vegetables—variously raw, marinated or flash-cooked over high heat—mingled with toasted pistachios, fresh soybeans, apples and fennel in a mushroom gelée. It was permeated with the aroma of purple basil and was unbelievably good. So was a warm wild-mushroom and chicken-liver salad with baby greens and toasted pistachios in a herbaceous pine-nut vinaigrette.

Mr. Cuevas has worked in top restaurants in Spain, and he brings subtle Spanish touches to some of the dishes. Slices of foie gras (not raised on the farm) come on a green glass plate accompanied by puntarelle (wild chicory), fennel, tapioca and apple, with a Prosecco vinaigrette and toasted Marcona almonds. It’s light and refined, with a lemony sweetness—the last thing you’d expect with foie gras. Fluke arrived in a big white bowl with honmichi mushrooms, fennel, chopped herbs and fennel fronds floating in an intense, clear broth made from tomato, zucchini and cucumber water, drained in a cheesecloth. Three smoked shrimp were plopped on a bright green lawn of puréed herbs sprinkled with “panther” soybeans. Cod, an all-white dish, was served in a creamy almond shellfish broth, laced with strips of zucchini and Marcona almonds.

Mr. Barber and Mr. Cuevas like tart, citrusy tastes. The crabmeat salad, with mint and cilantro, micro greens, green-tomato marmalade and diced apple was pure heaven. The Berkshire pork was wonderful, but the bitterness of an arugula and mustard-herb pesto served with it didn’t set off the meat to the best advantage. I loved the tiny, tiny lamb chops, with tiny, tiny potatoes, cannellini beans and lettuce, along with a dollop of braised leg and shoulder. Cobia, a large white fish with meaty, firm-textured flesh, came with colorful twin sauces, a rich purple Concord grape cooked with roast lobster shells and port, and a yellow pepper sauce.

Blue Hill serves a great chocolate brioche bread pudding with roast peanuts and salted caramel in the middle. The apple cobbler is deconstructed: The apples come in a Mason jar, and the crumble is served on the side. Seckel pears poached with caramel were laced with a passion-fruit sauce that kicked the pears into action. A dark chocolate soufflé with ricotta ice cream was a little dry but had great flavors. The fromage blanc soufflé was flawless, with pink peppercorn ice cream. Tiny fresh pears at the peak of ripeness were served as petits fours alongside chocolate truffles.

As we were finishing our marvelous desserts, the women from the once-raucous table got up to leave. The schoolteacher was at the table next to us, and one of the culprits stopped in front of her and glared. “Next time you come here, take a Valium!”

Everyone laughed.