FLAVORS
Microgreens
Grow Up
After 15 years on the menu, chefs see to it that the tender
vegetation continues to sprout in amazing ways.
By Jody Shee
Perhaps no other item on the plate is as
much of a collaboration between chefs
and growers as microgreens. And as long
as innovative and influential chefs keep
getting restless with ingredients available
to them, there will always be new micro
flavors growing in greenhouses.
Some may call them micro sprouts, but
The Chef’s Garden has always called them
microgreens. “Microgreens are grown in
soil. Sprouts are hydroponics and don’t
get the same flavor or intensity,” Jones
says. Not only is soil the more natural
environment, water carries E. coli, which
has been a problem with sprouts.
For The Chef’s Garden in Huron, Ohio, one
of the leading microgreen growers, it all
began about 15 years ago when Chicago
chef Charlie Trotter told co-owner Lee
Jones that he was finished with mesclun
mix. Trotter asked Jones if they could come
up with something new and sexy with great
flavor to enhance plate presentation.
Jones defines microgreens as plants
harvested at the cotyledon growth stage,
when the seed splits and sprouts with
the first two leaves. (You can’t visually
identify what kind of plant it is until the
third leaf sprouts.)
“He sent a team out here and gave us
some suggestions,” Jones says. “We
started the product and they tested, tasted,
suggested, and we collaborated. And that
was the beginning of microgreens.”
Micro chives complete this Wahoo Sashimi,
Summer Bean Salad and Citron Vinaigrette
created by Dean James Max chef/
president of DJM Culinary Management,
which operates 3030 Ocean, Fort
Lauderdale, Fla., AMP 150, Cleveland, and
Latitude 41, Columbus, Ohio.
The door is now wide open, not only for
fine-dining restaurants but also for chains,
and not only for common seed varieties
but for an evolution of global varieties. “The
bonus is there’s always something new and
exciting around the corner from a trip to
Spain, Africa or Japan,” says Scott Hunnel,
executive chef for Orlando, Fla., Walt Disney
World’s Victoria & Albert’s. “There’s a flavor
in that green, and it’s a bonus they are able
to grow some of those here (in the U.S.).”
Through extensive research and
development, and with the help of chefs,
The Chef’s Garden experiments with about
