This is New York’s veggie moment. There are lines outside vegan mecca By Chloe. Dirt Candy has moved to a bigger space. Jean-Georges Vongerichten is getting ready to open his vegetarian eatery ABCV, and every other ambitious restaurant in town has a vegan option on its menu.
So the strongest El Niño ever couldn’t have hit at a worse time — changing weather and rainfall patterns, reducing the bounty from California and Arizona, and driving up prices. Local grocers have been hit, too.
“Cauliflower has tripled in price from under $20 a case to about $60, and we weren’t able to get broccoli rabe at all at the end of December,’’ says Enrico Proietti, owner of Italian restaurant Bella Blu on Lexington Avenue.
Albert Wu, owner of China Fun on the Upper East Side, says scallions were the worst offender, jumping from $15 to $50 per shipment.
Some hot spots are raising prices, but many are taking signature items off their menus.
Problems began in early December. “We use a lot of rainbow cauliflower, but it has jumped to about $70 a case so we aren’t buying it now, and we are making Chinese broccoli chips in place of our broccoli rabe chips,” says Amanda Cohen, chef-owner of Dirt Candy. “We haven’t raised prices because we knew this was coming and decided to take the hit. Unfortunately, our business is based on vegetables.”
Bustan, the buzzy Middle Eastern restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, features roasted whole heirloom cauliflower with extra-virgin olive oil, anise honey and seasoned labane for $15. More than once, they’ve had to remove the dish from the menu because they had no cauliflower. When they do have it, the price has gone up to $16 to offset the tripled cost. “Cauliflower, broccoli rabe, broccolini, celery, tomatoes, red pepper, arugula and strawberries have all become crazy expensive,’’ says the restaurant’s chef, Jose Paulo Cortes.
That goes for grocery store produce, too.
At Key Food in Park Slope, Brooklyn, prices have jumped from $1.99 to $2.99 for a head of lettuce — while cauliflower shot up from $3.99 to $6.99, an employee revealed.
Ray Thompson, vice president of produce for Fairway markets, says El Niño is affecting produce across the board — there are especially lower supplies of berries, tomatoes, leafy greens and citrus.
“Everything is getting a little tighter,” he says. “You’re getting too much wind in some areas, too much rain in some areas. We’re trying to source from everywhere.”
Many restaurant chefs are getting creative or just eating the cost so it’s not passed on to customers.
“We are trying to weather the season and play with the menu,’’ says Cortes. “We are using acorn squash in place of broccoli rabe and baby kale instead of arugula. We are also trying to get some produce out of Mexico. ’’
The East Village’s Butter is continuing to serve its signature cauliflower steak, but has also added more veggie alternatives like rutabaga and brown-butter ravioli to take some of the heat.
Joey D’Angelo, who just opened the Upper East Side farm-to-table restaurant Copper Kettle Kitchen, says he is staying as local as possible during this period. “I’m keeping away from cauliflower right now, and unless the price for broccoli rabe comes down, I will pull that off the menu . . . and replace it with mustard greens from an upstate farm.”
But that broccoli rabe price may not drop any time soon. Greg Lang, manager of Union Market in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn — where the supply of leafy greens is down by as much as 50 percent — says suppliers told him to expect shortages until at least the spring.
Additional reporting by Tim Donnelly