Instructions: Sprouts were watery, stringy, impossible to keep fresh. So 60s.

These days, menus dont tout sprouts. The 00s version is microgreens, which have a similar look but a powerful taste.

So tiny they have to be harvested with scissors, microgreens include doll-size lettuces, which became popular a few years ago at high-end restaurants, and the newer development, infant herbs. They run upwards of $20 a pound, but a little goes a long way. And they do accessorize a plate.

Ron Siegel, chef at Masas in San Francisco, will be sprinkling in lots of microherbs and microgreens this summer. With frisee and olive oil on top of a soft-shell crab appetizer, with cucumber-cilantro water and mango chutney. On top of a quail salad or a shrimp canape. "Small looks better. Its not as cumbersome. And the flavors so amazing."

Hes especially fond of microcelery. "Its like eating the best stalk of celery in the world, and its just the leaf. This is a pretty big revolution."

But even Masas has its limits. Siegel draws the line at micro white asparagus, $48 a pound. "Sometimes it just gets too fussy."

At Stratta Grill in downtown San Jose, executive chef Michael Alsop buys a five-way blend grown by Classic Salads in Hollister, and uses the greens as a garnish, especially on fish dishes. Or he might mix some microherbs with pea shoots in a light vinaigrette because "one flavor doesnt interfere with the other." His roasted beet salad with a microgreen and herb topknot has become a signature dish.

As more restaurants have adopted micros, prices have come down. Tim Benham, executive chef at Tarragon in Sunnyvale, says when he first came across microgreens three years ago, they cost him $20 for a quarter-pound. Now he buys a one-pound mix of five greens and herbs from Pride of San Juan for $23. It lasts up to a week, loosely packed in rows. A one-pound box - of cilantro, beet greens, kohlrabi, tatsoi and arugula, for example - is enough for 40 orders of his popular seared scallop appetizer.

"They give a clean flavor thats intense but not overpowering," Benham said.

Microarugula, for example, has a peppery bite at first, but it doesnt stay with you. Cilantro is easier to take and, as Benham says, lacks the soapy flavor many people dislike.

Lee Jones family farm, Chefs Garden, has become the countrys most prominent micro grower. The Huron, Ohio, farm supplies top restaurants such as Alain Ducasse in New York and Charlie Trotters in Chicago. In Northern California, clients include Masas, the Ritz-Carlton at Half Moon Bay and the French Laundry.

Erie Countys fertile lake-bed sand once supported more than 300 vegetable growers. Jones and his brother, Bob, and father, Bob, are the only survivors.

When their traditional farm went belly up in 1980, they knew they had to come up with new products to survive. The key was listening to chefs.

"First, we did squash blossoms," Jones says. "Then chefs started wanting different-size lettuces."

Charlie Trotter was the key. The Joneses had tried and failed at pitching microgreens to local restaurants. Then Trotter called to say, as Jones remembers it, "Were over mesclun. Every grocery store has it. What have you got that will blow everyone away?"

Trotter not only spread the joy of micros at his own Chicago restaurant, but he went around the country as a visiting chef. Restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, even Atlanta started calling the Joneses.

"I used to think wed get done someday, trying new products. But its truly endless," Jones says. "We now have 265 varieties of eggplant, from the size of a pea to a football." They also have about 80 microgreens and 37 microherbs.

The attraction for chefs, Jones says, is the wow factor. "Theyre putting on a show every night. If you go to a play one week, you dont want to see the same play again the next week. Thats how it is with restaurants."

In growing microgreens, the soil is sterilized with heat. No manure or pond water is used. "You could eat the dirt," Jones says. "They do sprout, but they arent sprouts." Sprouts grow in water.

Its a different mentality from most farming, Jones says. "We speak in terms of flavor per bite rather than tons per acre."

Measurements are so exact, they come in six sizes ranging from micro (1 inch or smaller) to young (5 or 6 inches). In between are cotyledon, petite, ultra and baby.

Jeff Pieracci of Galli Produce in San Jose had despaired of getting South Bay restaurants to buy micros until recently. While always looking for the next new thing, restaurants can have a herd mentality when a new food is expensive and a little strange. Pieracci says, "They all wait for everybody to use them."

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