Notables other than M.J. include the folks down at Brix in Flagstaff, who serve local lamb with their panzanella as well as gnocchi made from local goat’s cheese, or Imagine: A Restaurant in Little Rock, which strives to source all-Arkansas produce and meat. Up north, L’Etoile in Madison, Wisconsin, the Midwest’s answer to Chez Panisse since 1976, is still going strong, and has spawned flattering imitators like Harvest and the Old-Fashioned, whose kick-ass beer-battered cheese curds are not to be missed. Still farther north is the matchless Angry Trout Café in Grand Marais, Minnesota, where sustainability is religion: beer comes from taps rather than bottles, teensy linen napkins soak up sauces, and take-out containers must be signed for and returned. Thankfully, the food is good, or it’d be all for naught.

Waaaay up several hours north of Toronto is Michael Stadtlander’s kooky Eigensinn Farm, a $250 prix-fixe BYOB joint that nonetheless has everyone and their mother waxing melodic. Everything comes off the farm, including the utensils, vegetables, and plateware, and, if the weather’s good, gets eaten outside amidst statues and tree-stump seats built by Stadtlander and the fauns and wood nymphs he’s got indentured there. 

There’s New Rivers restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, who’s been trumpeting the cause since 1990, in other words way before it was cool. The team at Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee, whose chef John Fleer pioneered “Foothills Cuisine®” (no joke), serves Tennessee poussin, paddlefish roe, and Anson Mills grits; the bar serves twenty-four American whiskeys. South of them, just outside Atlanta, is Watershed restaurant in Decatur, proud to put pimento cheese sandwiches side-by-side on a menu with butter bean hummus and gingered beets. 

Unfortunately, the wonderful Restaurant Brana in Miami, my most un-sustainable hometown, closed its doors after a few months. Not everyone gets it yet—but judging by the fevered and delicious bounty on offer from Vancouver to Sarasota, it won’t be long.