Row 7 is a seed company devoted to creating new varieties of vegetables—and we’re hoping eventually grain—that have been selected and bred for flavor. The idea came out of a lot of work I’ve been doing, and conversations I’ve been having with seed breeders, for the last 10 years about the kinds of ingredients I’m looking for in my kitchen at Blue Hill. While seed breeders are very responsive to the idea of selecting for flavor, it is not what they are usually asked to think about. They are usually asked to prioritize things like yield, uniformity, and shelf-life.

Seed breeding is important because the recipes that I write start with the seed. All chefs want control, and part of the farm-to-table movement has been about controlling where your ingredients come from, how they’re grown, and who’s growing them. This is taking that one step further. Being able to write a recipe from the seed level gives us chefs the opportunity to act as champions for our food system on a fundamental level—thinking about flavor and nutrition in addition to yields.

Read more about seed-to-farm-to-table by Elliot Brennan at Food Tank