A FEW YEARS BACK,kale became the darling of American dining. Then matters progressed, and our dalliance with kale led to an engagement with other things cruciferous. You might not have given the latest favorite two looks before, but look again: It’s sweet. It’s familiar. It’s reliable. It’s cabbage.

“I love cabbage,” Marc Forgione declared recently in the kitchen at American Cut, his Manhattan steakhouse. The chef and restaurateur was demonstrating how he cooks an off-menu entrée for vegetarians. He has dubbed the dish—a thick slice of cabbage marinated overnight in a garlicky honey-balsamic vinaigrette and then grilled—“cabbage porterhouse.”

“It’s not some dainty vegetable,” said Mr. Forgione, pointing to the core in a slice. “See, that looks like a center-cut bone, with the loin on one side and tenderloin on the other.”

Tight and green, waxy and magenta, frilled or flat or pointed, the hardheaded vegetable we know as cabbage, Brassica oleracea capitata, was one of colonial America’s first domesticated vegetables, for good reason: It thrives in chilly climes, and several varieties can be stored for months.

Today, chefs like Mr. Forgione are coaxing it beyond the comfort-food zone of soups and slaws. They’re grilling it, roasting it whole, even oven-drying it to make “chips.” That’s not to say chefs have stopped making Teutonic krauts or Irish corned beef and you-know-what. But the traditional approaches are now just part of a bigger bag of tricks for wooing the flavor from the former wallflower.

Take the spit-roasted whole cabbage at Marc Vetri’s Lo Spiedo in Philadelphia. Chef de cuisine Scott Calhoun lets an impaled green head revolve in the fire until it’s coal-black on the outside, soft and smoky within. Then he dresses it in Sherry vinaigrette and a creamy gorgonzola sauce. “Some people who don’t enjoy blue cheese find it goes really well with cabbage,” said Mr. Calhoun. “And adventurous eaters try it and love it.”

For home cooks, perhaps even more accessible is a cabbage-on-cabbage recipe from “A Girl and Her Greens,” the latest book by chef April Bloomfield. She uses frilly Savoy cabbage, whose well-wrinkled leaves form tight wrappers for a braise of bacon, aromatic vegetables and plenty more of the sweet Savoy.

“I suppose [cabbage] is just the new next thing, but I grew up eating it,” she said. “This dish is so simple and yet so powerful. It’s packed with flavor. Cabbage is queen.”

With flattery like that, this humble vegetable just might get a big head.