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DAVID KINCH: Controlling fire to control heat and control evaporation is the foundation of everything that we do.

There's these elemental things happening.

There's fire and water, and movement, and everything in its raw state, and the state that's unfinished.

And this process of creating is to be in control of everything.

Everything was centered around the roar and the flames of the fire and the stoves.

You know, being in control, not letting the fire control you but controlling the fire.

You can actually taste the sun.

I don't know how we're going to top that one.

This is the fun part in cooking.

Cheers.

♪ ♪ (sniffing) (birds chirping) KINCH: It happened on July 4th weekend.

The restaurant was closed.

I was actually in the airport in Pittsburgh, getting on the plane.

I got a call from a Los Gatos exchange.

I was wondering who was calling me, because it was 5:30 in the morning in California.

It wasn't a good feeling, you know something's up.

He said, Los Gatos Fire Department, the restaurant's on fire.

I ask if it was under control, and they said no.

The building and the roof was engulfed.

I hung up the phone and I got on the plane.

Spent six hours wondering exactly what was going on.

When I arrived at the restaurant, the fire department was still there.

News teams, onlookers.

There was just tremendous amounts of water and smoke.

My worst fears were confirmed.

The damage was extensive, a good part of the roof was missing.

There's only two things they could really tell me: the fire did not start on the inside of the building, and that the fire did not start itself.

You know, there's a lot of anger... Not just buildings burn in fire, perhaps, you know, because the building burned, a good portion of myself burned as well.

And during the rebuilding process, there was a lot of rebuilding of myself.

Manresa was going into his 12th year, we had to go back to go, go back to square one.

When the cold, hard reality of that sets in, you realize how daunting it's gonna be.

You want to prove nothing's gonna stop you.

There's a silver lining.

Cooks are by nature creative.

The relentlessness of the day-to-day operation of working in a kitchen kind of eliminates the ability to sit down and really think things through.

So missing six months out of the year, we were given a great opportunity to revisit every detail, every step of everything that we did.

Things that we only dreamed about.

In essence it was like completely reopening the restaurant again.

This is a recipe that I worked on at home for the past six months.

It's deceptive, it's a little cookie, but there's a lot of little things in it.

When I think of granola, when I think of so-called "health foods," a lot of people think of California.

That's something I always wanted to work with.

And have fun with it, actually make it taste good.

I don't think people expect it to taste delicious.

I remember growing up in the '70s, health food stores, it was just like the food was gross.

Everything was like fibrous, so I think people are surprised to know that chia seed and flax seed are in it, and maybe they can taste really good in context.

First I'm going to make the batter.

I'm gonna tamis everything.

The sugar's always the big culprit with lumps.

Kosher salt.

Dried spice mix, mostly ginger but also nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, mace.

It's kind of like gingerbread.

Gives it more of a festive feel.

I wanted to do it gluten free.

I didn't want to use gluten free flour, I wanted to find something that was natural, and this right here is basically steel-cut oats that went into a blender.

The wet ingredients: we melted butter, egg whites... As simple as a cookie is, with all the different elements in it, there's a lot of trial and error.

And that's what cooking is, making mistakes, improving upon it.

This was the last element that really took it to a new level.

A cold-pressed, extra-virgin pumpkin seed oil.

A beautiful color element to it, it almost kind of turns it green, and you can smell it combined with the pumpkin spice.

Gets almost like an autumnal flavor more than anything else.

This is the finished batter.

I pipe a small amount out.

I'm trying to form as close as I can a perfect circle.

And again, just for such a small cookie, there is a lot of different ingredients.

A lot of different cereals.

We have a puffed rice.

Quinoa puffed like a cereal.

Millet, hippie health store, has to have flax seed, as along with chia seeds.

Sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds to match the oil.

Sunflower seeds.

The nuts were the hardest part, finding the right balance.

Some overpower others.

Pecan, slivers of almond, cashew, and, lastly, walnut.

The strongest one of all.

Just give it a toss.

This is the fun part.

Just get to dump it, it's like a sand box.

And then, back out.

Nice mix of everything.

And then this is ready to bake off.

I just pulled these out of the oven, about 12 minutes, and at the restaurant, we present these as a little gift.

The box is filled with various grains, seeds, and the cereals, they're reminiscent of what we actually put in the cookie.

And we'll present these at the restaurant like this.

Because of the interruption, I went through a pretty dark period, you know, where I was isolated, a lot of time alone, and to think about a lot of things.

Acidity is a real big part of my cooking.

Keeps things on edge.

Keeps things sharp.

Look at that one!

Cara cara oranges has the requisite acidity, it's really balanced.

It's got a lot of flavor, but also, when it's ripe, it has almost like a rose champagne color that's really beautiful as well.

You could even mistake the juice from its appearance to a pink grapefruit.

And that's the one for the drink right there, it's really ripe.

I can smell it from here.

I garnish the drink, too, with the peel.

Put it in your gin bottle tonight in the hotel room.

During the down time, I needed a cocktail-- I didn't need a cocktail, I wanted a cocktail-- the only thing around was this.

I stumbled upon it in a "swag bag."

It's a California whiskey, and I didn't know anything about it.

I had no real intention of drinking it.

The unusual thing about it was that it's not peated but it's hopped like a beer.

I like beer with... a lot of hops, and you can smell it in there.

The cara caras were still around, actually it was the height of the season.

So I threw some things together and I kind of liked it.

Over a period of time, I kept working on it.

Research and development... more than a couple.

I think there is probably about a half dozen versions of the David until I got it right.

I would have a drink on the porch and I watched a lot of sunsets.

The David was a big part of that.

Put two of these in, and yes, that's one drink.

It was a distraction, a distraction on many levels.

Carpano Antica, which is one of my favorite things in the whole world.

It's like vermouth on steroids.

It's like a really nice red wine that has herbs or spices.

Aperol is a classic bitter.

Amaro.

Bitter is very underrated as a flavor.

Some orange bitters.

Detect a theme?

I don't know what came first, having the whiskey or having a bowl of the fruit.

Maybe it was just a happy coincidence.

Maybe that association of the color.

And for this, I just put a small amount, because I'm not a big fan of sweet cocktails but I do want the fragrance.

Tried it with others, less sweet than the cara cara, even grapefruit.

They were all interesting and good but not as good as the cara cara.

Now I'm going to chill...

I strain it.

It looks like a cara cara.

Cheers.

That's pretty good.

I don't think the rebuilding of myself is really quite complete yet.

I think about the fire every day.

I spent three months waking up every night, middle of the night, screaming and yelling, clawing, trying to get out of bed, dreaming about fire.

It certainly gives a sense of mortality.

We kind of tie in our very being into the work that we do.

If I became the restaurants, I felt that the restaurant was me.

The high points of the restaurants and the low points of the restaurant were directly reflected in my personality, how I behaved, perhaps how I treated others.

Before the fire, I never once thought about that sort of stuff.

As much as I love what I'm doing, you know, I don't want to die in the kitchen.

Part of finding this balance is to know when... when to leave.

Away from work, I can shut off, and I wouldn't have to deal with it, I could be myself.

The ocean washes away everything: control.

If it was a bad night the night before, it makes you forget all that.

If you're floating on a surf board and it's early morning, and the sun's just coming up, there is a certain serenity.

Perspective.

The ocean is in charge.

You're miniscule, you're just a speck of dust.

We have this exclusive relationship with Love Apple Farms in which anything that grows there, anything that we work in collaboration with them, is for the restaurant and not for anybody else.

I go to the farmer's markets and great peaches and great asparagus and great vegetables, and, you know, I got three chefs in front of me, I got three chefs in back of me in line picking out the same stuff.

The question became: how do we create some sort of separation, you know, and be different?

The logical step was to start a relationship with a farm that would grow bespoke for us.

It is not a locavore statement.

It is not any kind of political statement whatsoever.

The relationship with Love Apple is about the quality of the product, and us having much more control over that quality product.

It is really all about us trying to get the best carrot, the best leek, a diversity of herbs and flowers that you can't find commercially into the restaurant.

Hey, what's up?

Garden's here.

How do we use all of this bounty that the farm gives us?

After the fire, we rethought everything except the garden, because the garden was our signature dish.

It was the dish that symbolized the relationship between Love Apple Farms and the restaurant.

In essence, it was a fancy salad.

I just remember looking down at the place and I'm going, you know, "I don't want to do this anymore."

It just didn't make sense.

We changed everything but this?

The new dish turned out to be more of a distillation.

Flavors were much more concentrated, anywhere from 45 to 60 ingredients and seven different steps.

It's hyper-seasonal, it's like everything that's going on in day-to-day basis at the farm.

We have various different mustards, spinaches, kales, sorrels.

Pissenlit, French word for dandelion.

Pissing the bed.

Start with olive oil, making a ravioli filling that's gonna taste as much of the color of green as possible, which to me is a lot of nice bitter greens.

Very, very savory, how you imagine the color green tastes like.

Bitter in a good way.

It's the very first dish people get when they're in the restaurant.

I like the idea of serving something bitter early, because it stimulates the appetite.

We're just gonna cook it down as much as we possibly can so it'll make a soft puree.

With salt, seasoned just a little bit, but seasoned often.

You add the salt little by little in layers as it goes, and it'll actually be more complex because the character of salt changes as it cooks.

It smells green, it smells like the farm.

Walking around the farm and picking things up and eating it when you're outside.

You can actually taste the sun and all the energy required to grow it.

And the sun that has been captured in it at that point in time, you can taste it.

It sits in a cooler for two or three days, it loses that intangible that's between good and great.

This little bit of grated lemon peel, bring out the oils, to accentuate the bitterness.

I like to do this when it's still warm, 'cause it tends to aromatize.

And this to me has always been the most interesting thing, black licorice root.

It's one of my favorite flavors.

Has a certain sense of exotic.

I'm gonna mess this up, it's been a while, I'll fake it.

This is a pasta dough that also contributes to the bitter elements.

We add a really intense extract of coffee and chicory root and that's why it has this color.

We need to get it as thin as possible.

Once you get to a certain number, here I'm below three on this, I always like to pass the dough through the machine at the same number twice.

The first time it stretches the dough and the second time it relaxes the dough, keeps it in place.

I like to always have the same side facing up, have the same end going in the machine.

I don't know why.

I think a little bit is superstition.

Wish I had more table.

I have pureed the greens with the licorice root and the lemon peel, that's what's in here.

They're actually called mezza luna.

Half moon.

Old famous chef adage in my kitchen: perfection does not exist, but that doesn't mean you can't work constantly to attain it.

This is a velouté, a vegetable broth made with the roots, the stems, a lot of the leftovers that have aromatic qualities at the farm.

We simmered potatoes in it, and then we pureed it.

Spring mode's really, really intense right now.

What we have here is a puree of softer herbs that you don't see during the winter: first basils, sorrel's going crazy, purslane.

Peas, fava beans, fava leaves.

A warm plate, velouté, olive oil infused with the herbs savory, thyme, and rosemary.

Our raviolis, chicory root pasta stuffed with bitter greens.

Our edible dirt: potatoes that have been boiled, dehydrated, ground up with toasted almonds and roasted chicory root.

It represents the relationship with the farm and the dirt.

We always had this rule, is that if it was from the farm, it had to be on the garden, and if it wasn't from the farm, it could not be on the garden.

The only thing not from the farm that is on this plate: aged Parmigiano-Reggiano, pleasantly bitter.

I allow that to happen because the cheese is 13 years old, which is the same age as the restaurant.

The raw set: edible leaves, shoots, and vegetables, misted with a homemade nasturtium vinegar.

Chrysanthemum, New Zealand spinach, curly mustard, bronze fennel, purslane, sunflower shoots, chervil, red curly mustard, shiso, purple basil, amaranth, ice plant, turnip, fennel.

It looks like a salad, but it's more than that, I like to think.

Complexity and flavor.

Fried set: onion shoots, kind of like a little halo.

This is yarrow, one of the most bitter culinary herbs around.

And the last thing we have on here are the flower sets: white borage, broccoli flower, sage flower, arugula, chive flower, calendula, with yellow and orange, and my favorite right now, bachelor's buttons.

Into the vegetable garden.

The new version, post-fire.

The attraction to cooking had always been here is this work that involved your senses and you created things.

And not only did you create things that maybe you found pleasing, but other people found pleasing, and they, in a very intense and connected way, told you how much they liked it.

There really isn't, for me, you know, any better feeling in the world.

I think I've learned from the fire that my time is finite.

What I do now is not to compromise on what we do, but not to associate so much of my life... attach my own well-being to it.

The restaurant is a living thing.

The restaurant's not finished.

But neither am I.

(sniffs)