Dan Barber is on a mission to quite literally plant seeds for a better future. Around a decade ago, after learning that the nation’s largest food companies rarely breed food for flavor—and instead select for self-serving characteristics, such as the ability to produce high yields or endure long-distance travel—Barber, a chef and the co-owner of the restaurants Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, New York, turned his attention to seeds. From there, he collaborated with a vegetable breeder to make the honeynut squash, a sweeter, healthier version of the butternut variety, and has since used his cooking to raise awareness about the vital roles seeds can play in our food system. A co-founder of the seed company Row 7, he is not only concerned with the beneficial impacts seeds can have on taste buds, but also on communities and the planet.
Rethinking what people eat has played a constant role in Barber’s practice. His cooking style, honed at restaurants including Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse, favors minimal ingredients as a way of celebrating their distinctive tastes. His upstate restaurant sits on a property shared with the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, a nonprofit operation that includes a regenerative farm and robust educational programming; there, his Blue Hill kitchen staff works with the Stone Barns teams to develop new ideas around food and farming. Barber regularly hosts educational programs, too, such as WastED, a 2015 pop-up that served delicious dishes made from ingredients most of us would consider trash.
On this episode, Barber talks with Andrew about the distinctive role that restaurants can play in supporting social movements, food scraps as part of a chef’s DNA, and why producing more food won’t solve food insecurity.
Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.
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