Magic Greens

As vegetables increasingly vie with meat for attention on the plate, they’re also competing in price: Pound for pound, elite produce can cost more than wagyu beef

- Kate Krader

Yes, there’s a world where people pay almost $50 a pound for tiny lettuces. They assemble religiously in the crowded north-west corner of Manhattan’s Union Square Greenmarket, where the eerily perfect Windfall Farms stall appears on Saturdays and Wednesdays. While some stands radiate a hippie-casual vibe, at Windfall the exquisite, vibrantly colored vegetables are treated with the care one sees in a Madison Avenue boutique. Signs caution customers against touching the greens, because they’ve already been hand-washed several times.

That care, systematic throughout the life cycle of these little lettuces, doesn’t come cheap. Most of the baby greens—the baby mesclun mix, the wasabi-like green wave mustard—cost $12 for 4 ounces, or $48 a pound. Red amaranth sprouts are the priciest, at $64 a pound.

Windfall is exponentially more expensive than its competitors. The next most-costly greens at the market, the wild arugula and baby mustard greens from Landis Farm, go for $24 a pound. Across the way, at Catskill Merino Sheep, even free-range lamb loin chops don’t break the $30-a-pound barrier. By comparison, at Whole Foods Market, a 5-ounce box of Satur Farms mesclun mix goes for about $5.29. Across the country, at San Francisco’s fiercely competitive Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, the popular Marin Roots Farm sells its pea shoots for $9 a pound.