Do eggs come from eggplant? City slicker question, of course, but fortunately there’s a farm just 10 minutes from downtown Chattanooga so someone knew the right answer.

This city on the Tennessee River seems to be bursting with cooks who care about fresh ingredients, chefs with specialties and neighborhoods devoted to eating slowly, preparing carefully and helping each other compost and go organic.

“People want to know what food’s coming in the back door,” says Rob Gentry, who owns the Blue Plate near the Tennessee River. “It matters to people if we’re serving free-range, no hormones and antibiotic free.”

The kitchen, Gentry points out readily, has no microwave, no walk-in freezer, little storage and lots of pick-up and delivery from local farms and food producers.

Crabtree is the name of the urban farm 10 minutes from the downtown highlights: Aquarium, Coolidge Park, Walnut Street walking bridge and Hunter Museum of American Art.

At least 80 varieties of certified organic fruits and vegetables grow here on five of the non-profit’s 22 acres.

“From the ground up we’re teaching people, and learning ourselves, how to do home and community gardens,” says Melanie Babb. She coordinates programs on the site like two-day workshops just right in my book for a tourism holiday.

“People want to find ways to be involved in food and growing, and they want simple concepts with outdoor learning,” Babb observes.

Go for the annual spring or fall plant sale and find many heirloom varieties of vegetables, herbs and flowers.

Or be a volunteer for a day; just for the heck of it 12 people were helping plant a field of garlic the day I visited Crabtree Farms of Chattanooga.

Hang around Chattanooga a few days, eating often, and the local food folks will soon feel like your friends. They keep showing up at the places you want to visit.

I ate incredible handcrafted fresh bread at Niedlov’s Breadworks, bought a loaf to take home to share and then ordered up some more at the Blue Plate. Feels good recognizing a brand name on a menu when I know the brand is solo family local.

Crossovers like that popped up often in Chattanooga during my three-day visit. Restaurant staff shop locally, food growers offer classes and welcome volunteers and visitors recognize names and faces since they hang out in the same places.

In fact, two charming neighborhoods, distinctively different from each other, bustle with food preparation, outdoor art, food conversations, stylish places to eat and overnight digs.

Bluff View Art District seemed to me the fancy version while Main Street and around the corner to 14th Street the funkier, and for sure I liked them both. Their people are my reason.

Tight friendships among the neighbors, shared admiration, happy-to-be-here attitudes are what I observed chatting with shop clerks, coffee bean roasters, table servers, sausage stuffers and chocolate makers in both districts on back-to-back afternoons and evenings.

I strolled and sipped and ate. Didn’t sleep in either district because I was already booked on the legendary Delta Queen that retooled itself as a sit-still-in-the-water hotel in June.

Next time maybe I can stay at Miki Boni’s Artists Gallery Residence in the Main Street area with original art in every room, or the Bluff View Inn comprising three turn-of-the-century restored homes. In fact, Bluff View Arts District needs to be a stand-alone travel destination story another day.

Terminal Brewhouse is one of the spots to linger on 14th Street, just around the corner from Main and in sight of the famous Chattanooga Choo Choo. Go even if you don’t love beer because the renovation of this narrow, three-story railway station house is handsome.

They serve food too, emphasizing local and green, and their menu credits neighborhood vendors, craftsmen, helping hands and greenies.

This district prefers its pigs eat local too. Artisan cured meats from local farms are Trae Moore’s food passion.

“The flavor develops as the pig grows,” he says, “and slow and easy on free range pastures makes great flavor.”

Believing that folks who eat meat should watch how it is made, Moore is opening a Main Street butcher shop for his Link 41 business in 2010.

“Butchering used to be an honored career,” Moore says, “and now no-one wants to be in a slaughterhouse. It can be a respectful business.”

I don’t know much about butchering but I do like his zeal for merging farm and city traditions and culture and I know how good his Italian, Spanish and German sausages tasted.

Says he studied sausage making in each of those countries, becoming what he considers a farmer and a craftsman more than a chef.

Bread maker John Sweet learned about fresh bread and local bakeries as a high school exchange student in Germany.

“So simple, and so technically complicated,” he says of artisan breadmaking at Niedlov’s Breadworks. “The process is infinitely complicated with the biology and chemistry of fermentation, and the result so simple and pure and whole.”

John and Angela Sweet handcraft breakfast pastries and wonderful all-day breads, using a sourdough starter instead of commercial yeast, organic flours, whole grains and organic fruits and nuts.

The cardboard chart listing the exact times each day that batches need touching, turning and fine tuning told me my loaf would be personal.

Flowers and herbs bloom above the front door at this bread place on a big awning that looks sturdy. John and Angela believe in growing things, and composting too.

They also have a sculpture out front called “Cosmic Compass.”

Sculpture along Main Street gave me a chance to pause between eating and drinking; seven local artists were selected in a juried competition and their visions are as interesting as those of the food purveyors.

Look for the dog — big Dalmatian if you like obvious art, and then enjoy the philosophies of the stainless steel “Matriarch,” steel and marble “Slow Burn” and the copper “Party Dress.”

There’re more art, and you can get the descriptions on your cell phone as you tour; call 423-535-9083.

More good tastes available in the Main Street neighborhood too. Wendy and Brandon Buckner dip, sculpt and pour chocolate all day long. She’s also a classically trained pastry chef who loves what she’s doing.

“This is about celebration, about a healthy culture and enjoying a slower food style,” she says, serving up Brie in dark chocolate, blackberries in white chocolate, oatmeal stout beer within a square truffle.

Need a drink as you dine at the Hot Chocolatier? It’s divine: ground chocolate in the cup with hot milk poured on top.

Spices matter to Chattanooga’s eateries and it seems they find what they need locally. Alchemy Spice Company grinds weekly and leaves out the MSG, anti-caking agents and fillers, says owner Warren Stanko.

“Small batches only,” he says. “Fresh matters.

Chattanooga cooks and chefs all over town give a lot to flavor preparation.

Kevin Dunlap lost all the feelings in his fingers, he says, preparing way too much hot sauce for his Sugar’s Ribs restaurant.

“You’ll break a sweat eating my Hot Lips sauce, and it won’t wash off. Takes several days to wear off your hands or lips or wherever,” Dunlap says.

No French fries or baked beans here because Dunlap says they overwhelm pure, simple meat for barbecue. Pinto beans and slaw with vinegar get his approval.

Roasted okra too and the trick is washing it first in pork fat. Not the least bit slimy.

Look up, literally, to find this eatery; driving from the airport Sugar’s Ribs will be on your left. It’s just north of the I-75 and I-24 split, up high on TN Highway 184.

Good place to start, much more to try.