Alternative Community Farmer/WPB.FL

Marcus Yam/The New York Times

MIDDLEBURGH, N.Y.

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Jacob Hooper of Barber Farms shows Lucy’s father, Jonathan Benno, right, chef of the new Lincoln Center restaurant, one of the farm’s conehead cabbages.

THE former commandant of the elysian kitchen of Per Se, Jonathan Benno, was bouncing in the muddy bed of a Chevy pickup as it navigated 180 acres of vegetables at Barber Farms. It lurched to a stop before a row of weird, pointy-headed cabbages.

“Now, this interests me,” he said.

Jacob Hooper, the farm’s manager, plucked one and handed it to Mr. Benno, who nibbled a leaf and said, “It’s like a hearty lettuce, very mild.” The name of the cabbage, Caraflex, was unfamiliar, but he registered its taste for some future menu item.

Minutes later, Mr. Hooper was explaining how he protects his raspberries from fall frost. “Well, you can sign me up for raspberries in November,” the chef said with some excitement, and perhaps a hint of skepticism.

Mr. Benno’s field trip was no pastoral ramble. It was a crucial stop in his yearlong quest to open a $20-million restaurant at Lincoln Center in September. Once, farmers begged top chefs to give their produce a whirl. But with carrots, corn and tomatoes being accorded the fanatical attention once reserved for foie gras and truffles, chefs now come knocking.

Logic might suggest that it is easier these days for serious kitchens to find excellence. “But it gets harder for us,” said Michael White, the chef and an owner of Marea, along with Alto and Convivio, all in Manhattan, “since now, so many chefs are in competition for the same high-end ingredients.”

Visits to specialty farms in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania have become as much a part of the run-up to a high-stakes opening as picking a restaurant’s china — or its name.

Speaking of which, after months of debate, the restaurant finally has one: Lincoln. (This is the third in a series of articles about Mr. Benno and the Lincoln Center restaurant; the second focused on the search for a name.)

“Lincoln is readily identifiable and recognizable,” said Reynold Levy, president of Lincoln Center, “and like our arts center, the name Lincoln will be a powerful brand.” It is not, however, Italian.

“Zagat lists some 370 Italian restaurants in New York, and I didn’t want ours to become the 371st with an Italian name,” said Nick Valenti, chief executive of the Patina Restaurant Group, which will operate Lincoln. “You don’t need an Italian name to be Italian.”

But you do need vegetables. “It’s not enough now to pick up the phone and say to a distributor: ‘What have you got? O.K., give me a case.’ Now you want to see,” said Mr. Benno, 40. “You want to go there. They get to know us, and they see the possibilities for us. And for them.”

Top chefs can’t be lip-service locavores any longer. “Our customers travel to food and wine festivals,” Mr. White said, “and food devotees are more and more aware of the sourcing of products.” At the table, they can even surf the Web on their iPhones to check out the provenance of the steak, the chicken and the chicory.

The chef Daniel Boulud said that his relationship with some farmers goes back decades, and “they know our priorities and we know theirs,” he said. “We never argue about the price, and we support them in the hard times.”

To Mr. Benno, “This is not about currying favor, it is about developing a relationship. In this business, it’s about the handshake — looking them in the eye.” For there is an urgent new restaurant reality: “These days, carrots are in the ground Friday and on the plate Saturday night,” he said.

Locally, the farm-to-table revolution has seen an explosion of “varieties that have different color, flavor and cooking characteristics, instead of ordinary varieties chosen for their ease of shipping and stacking characteristics,” said John J. Mishanec, a specialist for the Cornell University Cooperative Extension program who has spent decades working to improve local farmers’ practices.

As Mr. White said, “You always want to be an innovator, and some farmers do, too.”

And so, he has scoured Italian Web sites to order spigarelli, arugula and radicchio seeds, and has asked farmers — including Rick Bishop of Mountain Sweet Berry Farm in Roscoe, N.Y. — to grow them. And Mr. Boulud has beaten the local bushes for sweet French radishes and cardoons.

Beyond this, given the explosion of farmers’ markets, ingredient-hungry chefs have to travel farther to get what they want, said Mr. Mishanec. It can be easier for small growers to sell in farmers’ markets for immediate cash — and often more per pound — than extending restaurants credit for 30 days, said Jim Barber, whose family has inhabited the Middleburgh farm for 153 years. " Unqoute.