The vegetarian-heavy menu trend in downtown Manhattan is picking up steam, but unlike other food fads, this one doesn’t seem like it will go out of fashion. In March, Bobby Flay opened the Mediterranean-inspired Gato, where the best-selling item is a kale and mushroom paella. In SoHo, stylish diners are flocking to Navy, where Camille Becerra incorporates ingredients sourced from a Pennsylvania farmers’ cooperative into a vegetable- and seafood-based menu that includes charred snow peas with peanuts, chili and basil. Later this fall, Amanda Cohen will move Dirt Candy, her popular meat-free restaurant, to a larger space on the Lower East Side, while Jean-Georges Vongerichten is expected to open his newest spot, a vegan and vegetarian eatery for ABC Home, in early 2015. At Narcissa, in the newly revamped Standard East Village hotel, John Fraser has made vegetables from the hotelier André Balazs’s upstate farm the basis of a fantastic meal. “Chefs aren’t thinking about how to make ‘vegetable’ dishes anymore,” according to Flay. “They’re making interesting, healthier dishes in general, and vegetables have become more a part of that.”