New York Chefs who have Mastered Sustainable Cooking
DAN BARBER
No list of sustainably minded chefs would be complete without mention of Dan Barber. As the chef and co owner of Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York, Barber’s name has become synonymous with terms like “farm to table” and “locally sourced.” He helped create the philosophy and framework for the Stone Barns Center, a working four season farm and educational center 30 miles north of New York City and he sources from the surrounding fields and pastures for his menus. Barber is dedicated to working with farmers to create better produce and he is known for his own variety of wheat, Barber wheat, which he has developed over years from heritage grains using cutting edge cultivation techniques to create a sweet soft bran which is ground whole. This year, Barber launched a seed company called Row 7 which will put into business practice what he has been doing informally for over a decade: breeding produce for taste first and foremost instead of just prioritizing the qualities which big seed companies focus on like long storage life, high yield and uniformity. So far Row 7 has launched 7 new seed varieties including the badger flame beet (a milder and sweeter beet that works well raw) and habadana peppers (a variety of peppers that highlight the floral and mellon flavors of habanero but without the burn).
BILL TELEPAN
Formerly the chef and owner of Telepan, a farm to table restaurant on the Upper West Side, Telepan is now the chef at Oceana, a large sea food restaurant in Times Square. He is one of New York’s first and most acclaimed proponents of greenmarket cooking. He has been the Executive Chef of Wellness in the Schools (WITS), a national non-profit that partners with public schools to provide kids with nutrition and fitness education and healthy meals, since 2008. Through WITS he has worked to develop nutritious school menus, teach culinary and nutrition concepts to students, parents, and teachers, and engage professional chefs across the country. He is also the director of sustainability at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) where he works with ICE’s hydroponic garden and with local farms to source unique herbs and teach students how to grow and harvest.
LIZ NUEMARK
Liz Neumark is the CEO of Great Performances, a catering company which she founded in 1980 as a way to supplement meager artist incomes with waitressing work in what was then the fledgling catering industry. The company is now one of the largest off-premise catering companies in the city serving a wide range of high profile corporate, social, and non-profit clients. Great Performances owns Katchkie Farm, a 60-acre organic farm in Columbia County New York, and has focused on celebrating local flavors while supporting sustainable agriculture. Katchkie Farm is also home to the Sylvia Center, an educational non-profit organization dedicated to farm-based nutrition education and cooking workshops. The farm also commits 5% of its annual harvest to anti-hunger organizations such as the New York Common Pantry and City Harvest.
JEHANGIR MEHTA
Mehta is the chef and owner of Graffiti Earth in Tribeca, a restaurant which not only boasts a vegetable forward menu, but also integrates environmental sustainability into the decor and dishes with furniture made from renewable materials and plates that come from family and friends. The menu at Graffiti Earth combines tastes and textures of Indian cuisine with flavors of the world. Mehta’s mission is to completely utilize every ingredient and so scraps from one dish are used in other dishes, for example the rind of the watermelon from the watermelon salad is soaked in vinegar and used in the duck fried rice. The ingredients are sourced from his garden or through local organizations.
