Give your veggies star treatment at dinnertime

If you've been grocery shopping lately, you already know the price of vegetables has gone up.

But don't bypass the produce aisle. Instead, prepare your veggies with similar respect usually given to steak or seafood.

Same-old steamed broccoli or the usual tossed salad can get pretty boring, making it easier to ignore all those veggies in the fridge until they go bad. In fact, a 2002 University of Arizona study found that on average, American families toss a half-pound of produce per day.

It pays to borrow a few ideas from restaurants that give veggies star treatment.

One of those is Caffe Niche, at 779 E. 300 South, which has a small plates menu featuring vegetables. These aren't the usual peas and carrots your mom used to nag you to eat. You'll find green, wrinkly Bloomsdale spinach, sauteed with Napa cabbage to give it crunch and texture. And strips of roasted yams with piquant chimichurri — a more sophisticated treatment than the sweet potato fries found in so popular in quick-casual dining spots.

There are crimson piquillo peppers stuffed with melted goat cheese and a bright purple beet and goat cheese salad. Spring rolls are stuffed with shards of fresh carrot, asparagus, red pepper and avocado, and served with a miso dipping sauce. Brussels sprouts are sauteed in butter until golden and caramelized, and fingerling potatoes are crispy on the outside and creamy, almost buttery, on the inside.

There's plenty of meat and seafood on Caffe Niche's menu. But it's tempting to just order the vegetable plate, which gives you six veggie combos artistically positioned on a narrow, rectangular white platter.

"A lot of our focus is on healthy eating, and vegetables are so fun, people have lost touch with them," said owner Ethan Lappe.

Prices are a bit higher than your usual chain restaurant, but Lappe points out that he uses as many local and natural ingredients as possible. And he adds that "A lot of people just come in and order the small plates of vegetables, which are around $6. You can order a bowl of chili for $5 and a small plate for another $5, and that's a $10 lunch."

A "niche" is defined as "a position particularly well suited to the person who occupies it," and Caffe Niche (pronounced by its staff as "Neesh") is indeed, finding its niche after a few years of deciding what it wanted to be. Salt Lake Magazine recently named it "Best Neighborhood Restaurant."