Dan Barber is a chef concerned about the farm-to-table journey of America’s food. He works with boutique farmers in upstate New York, including the Stone Barn Center for Food and Agriculture – a farm built in the 1930’s in a “Normandy style,” by wealthy philanthropist John D. Rockefeller to “preserve a memory – the place where he sipped warm milk from the lid of the milking jug.” (No matter how nostalgic, Ponderer does not recommend drinking raw milk, more especially the longer it’s been out of the cow.)

Barber is owner and chef at two New York restaurants, Blue Hill in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown (45 minutes from Grand Central Station). I visited his website at Blue Hill Farm.com before reading the book.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns is an elegant restaurant where jackets and ties are preferred for gentlemen. (Apparently fancy restaurants have given up trying to tell women what to wear.) In keeping with the ideal of serving the day’s harvest (and perhaps because of shortages for entree portions), Barber serves “multi-course tastings” for $138 to $198 per person. You’ll be happy to know you can buy Dom Perignon by the glass ($80). Most Americans are unlikely to dine here. But rich or extravagant people serve an important social function. They are the early adopters for things that become everyday benefits – air travel, electric cars, television, ocean cruises – so perhaps they can blaze the trail to better eating. Trends from expensive restaurants can affect the local grocery store, for example, designer pizzas are now available in your frozen food section.

New York is the right place for this venture – judging from my travels in lower upstate New York, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a farmer’s market or stand. Farm-to-table is a popular idea.

This is not a text book. It reads as conversation story-telling. Barber presents interesting stories about growing heritage varieties of crops and rotating crops and livestock to maximize soil fertility. This is not standard organic farming which retains the old American mindset: grow monocultures and serve slabs of meat with a few vegetables. It must be wonderful for a farmer to have the financial support to try these ideas and we meet many such farmers (at least one who, by the way, eats “hulking pork chops” and butters bread so thickly Barber “thought he was joking.”) Continue reading →