About three years ago, Mark Overduin noticed something strange happening to his kale. The president of Bejo Seeds, he had long been accustomed to flat sales for the challenging vegetable. "But almost overnight we watched our kale-seed sales quadruple," he says. "It's a nice example of a prominent chef's influence."
That chef is Dan Barber. From his restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns--located on a working farm in the Hudson Valley--he not only helped usher in the Great Kale Leap Forward of 2010 by publishing a recipe for his popular kale chips in Bon Appétit the year before, but also brought...