Dan Barber may be a highly decorated New York chef, but his abiding interest in farms and agricultural policy and the simple matter of where our meals actually come from makes him spiritual kin to Washington's own food community. And in the chef's James Beard-winning book The Third Plate, he tells the story of our own Stephen Jones and the Bread Lab up at WSU's Mount Vernon extension.

Barber was in town this weekend to speak at Fred Hutch's annual premier chefs dinner, where he managed to be wry and well-informed and busted my chops for using the term "food delivery system" in conversation when I really meant "a farm." (Apparently it just takes one worldview-transforming chef to tie my tongue and let the lame jargon fly.) Barber also shared a few observations about food, community, and how our Northwest penchant for unfussy eating could be the way of the future.

What are your impressions of the Northwest versus Northeast? 

It’s hard to compare the farming part of it because they’re different climates and different soils and different space considerations, but I’m really envious of what you have here. In terms of the gastronomical connection I’ve noticed chefs don’t feel the pressure to…put on airs or pretensions with their food in a way that happens a lot in New York. I mean I’m guilty of it, I’m not pointing a finger at anyone except for me really. 

Meaning food elsewhere can be overly wrought?

Yeah, self-consciousness, sort of the stuff I find myself indulging in because I just feel this intense sort of pressure. There’s a kind of expectation for how food should be presented and just the complexity of things that here, I think, are actually frowned upon. I’m always surprised by how un-forced things are here. In many ways that represents how restaurants are going to serve food in the future. 

How many times did you come out while you were working on the book? 

I used to do very quick visits to Stephen, to get back to the restaurant, but I was really fascinated with what he was doing, and the whole system of agriculture here that is really refreshing and really instructive for what’s possible for the future. 

In many ways in the Skagit Valley—at least that’s the part I know the best—there’s a real community of people, not just growers and chefs, but bakers and malters and brewers. There’s a lot going on that’s like pretty exciting. You have the soil to do it so that’s part of it, but also you have this community that seems to continue to get more connected and deepen, and that’s something that most places don’t have. 

What else in the food has you excited? 

Really, just being at the Fred Hutch Center, I spent a while learning about their research on the microbiome and its relationship with cancer; the connection seems obvious between this research that they’re doing and research that others are doing on the microbiome’s relationship to gastronomy—to fermented foods and preserved foods, and foods that are alive with bacterial communities that are the function of deliciousness. 

There’s a real nice correspondence there and with the microbial community in the soil. We often don’t connect those things. That an active, biological soil community is hugely important for flavor, but it’s also hugely important for our bacteria—it’s really one subject.