Vegetable Carpaccio The Newest Cutting Craze

The fanciest knife work that we ever wield when making salad is thorough chopping.

Not so with a growing number of chefs, who have looked to another dish as vegetable muse: carpaccio.

The Italian dish, in which paper-thin slices of beef are drizzled with olive oil and seasoned, has been hijacked and bent into meatless submission.

Mushrooms in particular have become a common theme: At Rivera in Los Angeles, John Sedlar's team uses a variety of fungi, such as chanterelles and blue foots. Sliced thinly, they are dressed with makrut (kafir) lime and chimichurri.

At the just-opened Swine in New York, portobello carpaccio rounds out a meat-centric menu. And Txikito has been serving a king oyster mushroom carpaccio for years.

We've seen other sturdy vegetables, such as eggplants and beets, go under the knife as well. But it's the humble turnip that surprised us most: At the recently closed Sustain in Miami, it made a thinly sliced bed for a biting salad of crab meat, avocado and corn (see the recipe).

This is one remix that might be better than the original.