In Michael Pollan’s new book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, he exhorts Americans to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Perhaps chefs misread that last line as “costly plants.” Based on the exorbitantly priced vegetables passing for entrees I’ve been seeing on New York City menus lately, I’ll be getting my five-a-day closer to home.
I’m not complaining about the high cost of micro-greens, imported edamame, or hard-to-grow baby vegetables here. I’m talking about the price tag of dishes people in many parts of the country would consider hog feed.
At Telepan, one of my favorite haunts on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the usually rational chef, Bill Telepan, offers—with a straight face—a “mid-course” of cabbage stuffed with barley for $17.
At 38 cents a pound, cabbage ranks second cheapest on the USDA’s price comparison list of 35 common fresh vegetables. Onions are fourth.
And if you act fast, you can delight in a stuffed Vidalia onion with Thumbelina carrot for $29 at Café Gray, in Midtown, Manhattan. I can just see the kitchen crew slapping high fives every time a customer orders this.
I have no idea what Thumbelina carrots are; for all I know they are pinky-size delicacies planted with horse-drawn plows and hand-harvested by Mennonite teenagers.
Still and all, even with labor, rent, and laundry factored in, this conflation of root veggies must yield a profit margin that makes George Soros seem undercompensated.
Maybe this is what we journalists refer to as a “small but growing trend.” We’ll have to wait for spring/summer menus to find out. I must concede, however, that I cringe at the thought that the restaurants will celebrate summer with a new favorite: $46 cole slaw with Tinker Bell cabbage.
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