Kale has become one of the trendiest foods in New York

Forget about filet mignon or caviar. The fashionable plat du jour these days is the humble kale salad, which seems to telegraph a certain veggie-chic for the juice-cleanse set. “For some reason when you go to a restaurant and they have a kale salad on the menu, you automatically accept that it’s a cool spot,” said Chelsea Leyland, a D.J. and downtown fixture. “It’s like playing the right music of the moment. It gives it that stamp of coolness.”