Pioneer of Farm-To-Table Wins Top Chef

by Spence Cooper on 06/05/09 at 10:55 am

Blue Hill at Stone Barns: Berkshire Pork Belly...

At the Oscars of the food world, the James Beard Foundation Awards, Dan Barber, a frontiersman of the farm-to-table restaurant movement was named the nation’s top chef. The James Beard Foundation Awards honor those who follow in the footsteps of Beard, considered the dean of American cooking when he died in 1985.

“Barber was lauded for using his New York restaurants — Blue Hill New York and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in Pocantico Hills — to highlight the difference seasonal and sustainable agriculture can make on the plate”.

New York chefs and restaurants won nearly all the top prizes at this year’s awards. Reuters’ Richard Leong reports that “Barber beat fellow New Yorker Tom Colicchio, Washington-based Jose Andres, and Paul Kahan of Chicago to be named the top U.S. chef, while eatery Jean Georges, the flagship of chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, was named the outstanding restaurant”.