Many New Yorkers’ kitchens are often barren, even dust-covered – due to the fact that we all eat out so much. With the amount of food we consume in restaurants, it’s odd that we don’t often think about where it actually comes from. But with tighter budgets, home cooking is making a comeback. And locally grown food from city farms may be one of the most efficient ways to stay on a budget while meaningfully investing in your community.

Enter Jim Denevan -- artist and eco-chef -- who has been bringing people together to dine on food that’s grown and harvested by local farmers and food artisans since 2000, when he started Outstanding in the Field, a for-profit event with tickets selling for about $150 each, featuring locally-grown selections by star chefs. The gatherings have taken place in farm fields, gardens, on mountain tops, sea caves, museums, ranches – and, most recently, Rockefeller Center in New York City. Notable chefs and restaurant owners Mario Batali and Tom Colicchio, along with 100 other socially-conscious foodies, were invited for a dinner prepared by Brown Café’s owner Alejandro Alcocer, made from locally-grown treasures: beets from Brooklyn, collards from the Bronx, Rockaway bass -- and a pig from Queens.

The first Outstanding in The Field event started with a dinner in Denevan’s hometown of Santa Cruz, CA, where he had worked as a chef since he was 17. “We had this idea from the beginning that the farmer should be the star - and the chef should be of secondary importance. The farmer really wasn’t talked about. Maybe that’s because people didn’t see farming as a creative pursuit. But I argue that it is,” he says. “I identify with focus and passion. Origin stories are interesting. I’m concerned with origins,” he continues.

Just as fleeting as the traveling diners are Denevan’s signature large-scale beach-sand drawings. “People always ask how it feels to have them wash away. But who would want it not to wash away?” says Denevan, whose work has been exhibited at P.S.1.

Wearing his customary cowboy hat at the Rockefeller Center event -- at a loft and garden space overlooking the midtown skyline -- Denevan had few words, letting the farmers do the talking for the night. What they said was enlightening: If New York City used the 14,000 acres of available rooftop for farming, it could feed as many as 20 million people. The environmental, nutritional, and socioeconomic benefits would include providing fresh fruits and vegetables to areas that have been historically malnourished; reduction of the worldwide carbon footprint; generating new sources of wealth to communities; and recycling city resources, like turning compressed garbage into soil fertilizer and using water run-off to cool buildings. We might not have the roof gardens yet, but we can make a small change now by supporting our local farms (if you’re in New York, there’s a list of some just below) – a social goal which Denevan has brought plenty of awareness to.

~Sara Costello


Taqwa Community Farm
90 West 164th street (at Ogden Avenue)
(718) 542-2700

Queens Country Farm
73-50 Little Neck Parkway
Floral Park, New York, 11004

East New York Farm
631 New Lots Ave
Brooklyn, NY
(718) 649.7979

East New York Farms
Just Food
Eat Well Guide