Chef Dan Barber

Ever since opening the first Blue Hill in New York City, Dan Barber made his mark as a champion of sustainably minded cooking and eating. At Blue Hill at Stone Barns, he has taken his philosophy much beyond the traditional farm-to-table approach and has called for a rethinking of the entire design of our food system, to create meals based on the natural symbiosis that takes place between ingredients throughout their production cycle, for optimum use of resources. He has pioneered working with seed scientists to breed for flavor, not just yield or pest resistance, developing in the process a strain of wheat, Barber Wheat, that features in the restaurant. His seminal award-winning book, The Third Plate, has extended his leadership beyond the world of diners.

Dan Barber is the chef of Blue Hill, a restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village, and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, located within the nonprofit farm and education center, Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture. His opinions on food and agricultural policy have appeared in The New York Times, along with many other publications, and in his award-winning book, The Third Plate. Barber has received multiple James Beard awards including Best Chef: New York City (2006) and the country's Outstanding Chef (2009). In 2009, he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.

His approach

Food should be identified with its place. When we opened Blue Hill back in 2000, our hope was to showcase the incredible produce of the Hudson Valley. In many ways, that’s still the overarching idea, but we’ve evolved in our approach. These days, I am thinking less about individual ingredients or plates of food and more about a whole pattern of farming and eating that supports this landscape. That means celebrating diversity: vegetables, grains, legumes, and every part of the animal, with meat used more as condiment than the focal point of a meal. It also means incorporating often-overlooked ingredients, from soil-supporting plants like rye, buckwheat, and cowpeas to foraged crops like cattails. Working with these kinds of ingredients—and moving away from our protein-centric expectation for what’s for dinner—makes good ecological sense. But it’s also about flavor: ultimately, this is a much more exciting and delicious way to cook. 

What plant is the most versatile to cook with?

I’d say wheat, only because it took me 30 years to realize its culinary potential. We’re used to thinking about wheat in all-purpose terms: flour that’s been stripped of its flavor and nutrition (the grain equivalent of a rotten tomato). It’s only when you cook and bake with the whole grain—and, even better, mill it fresh—that you start to really taste it. At the restaurant, we try to show off that flavor, and all its variations: between different kinds of wheat, different places, and different times of year. The versatility still surprises me.

Your best advice to a young, upcoming chef wanting to move towards plant-forward menu concepts?

Wear your industriousness on your sleeve a little more. Cooks are hardwired to look for culinary opportunities in things that would otherwise be thrown away—whether you’re talking about cauliflower cores or asparagus ends. Don’t be afraid to celebrate that.