3 “Better” Fish?
They’re not pretty, but they might help you go easier on the ocean
There are eight words that make a food writer tremble. They are spoken a little while after the writer has taken a seat in a restaurant far beyond his means. He peruses the menu and, hoping for an early night, picks out something light and simple. But before he can order his modest dinner the server whisks the menu out of the writer’s hands and speaks those eight words — graciously, of course — but with the air of a threat: “Chef would like to cook for you tonight.”
So began a meal one stormy October evening at Dan Barber’s restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, close to New York City. That a long, weird food march was in store is not surprising. As one of the few chefs ever listed among TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people, Barber, author of The Third Plate, is an endlessly inventive kitchen master, tirelessly working and reworking his ecological concepts on the former Rockefeller estate turned farm-to-table mad scientist laboratory. For years Barber has gained admirers that range from former United States vice president and climate-change warrior Al Gore to The New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells, who recently gave the restaurant a glowing review both for the quality of food and for the chef’s determination to cook with a smaller footprint.
