Chef/owner, Manresa, 320 Village Ln. (N. Santa Cruz Ave.), Los Gatos, 408-354-4330, www.manresarestaurant.com

Upcoming projects: Working toward producing 85 percent of his produce from the restaurant’s new garden this spring and eventually 100 percent – the only restaurant in the Bay Area to do so.

Fun fact: Kinch grew up in New Orleans, where he started as a dishwasher and landed a job as a prep cook for Paul Prudhomme at the age of 17.

The first thing that springs to mind while watching David Kinch hover over a patch of potatoes is that his intentions are as pure as the food he creates. There is no pretense, no ego, no quest for the spotlight – just a man and his vegetables on a warm summer morning.

Kinch had the dream of a biodynamic garden that produced all of the produce for his Los Gatos restaurant, Manresa, three years ago and has been looking at land ever since. When he saw Love Apple Farm, near Felton in the Santa Cruz foothills, he knew it was perfect.

Owner Cynthia Sandberg had already been providing Kinch with heirloom tomatoes for the past three years. “She is a world-class heirloom tomato grower,” Kinch says, “They are the best tasting anywhere.”

Sandberg’s commitment to the land – to having a farm that is not just organic, but biodynamic – also made her perfect for the project. She was so committed, in fact, that she filled in the pool and removed the lawn and several large cedar trees to meet the restaurant’s needs. “It’s a serious investment,” she explains, “a true partnership.” She is as enamored of Kinch’s ideals as he is of her tomatoes. “When I walk through the garden with David, it’s never about promotion; it’s always about flavor. He doesn’t care how things look as long as the flavor is there.”

Kinch has wandered over to the purple beans – he plucks several, handing them to Elizabeth and me to taste. They are a gorgeous eggplant color, and the crunchy sweet green flesh is delicious. “We’re serving roots on everything at Manresa – beans, radishes …” Kinch says, moving on to a patch of greenery. “This is an herb called stevia,” he says, pinching off a few green leaves. “It’s 300 times sweeter than cane sugar – in water it turns into simple syrup. We’re using it as garnish with fish right now.” In June, Kinch spent time in Paris with the gardener who tends to famed chef Alain Passard’s garden for his restaurant, L’Arpege, and found it inspirational. “It’s a closed circle from garden to restaurant,” Kinch explains. “That’s what makes it biodynamic – everything in the inner circle comes back to the earth – the produce is never refrigerated, it’s left to capture the sun to ripen in its own time.”

By this time we are standing in front of two adorable goats, a shy potbelly pig, and a bevy of chickens scratching in the dirt. “It’s all about taking care of the dirt properly – you have to care almost more about the soil than the produce,” Sandberg says. “You have to put organic matter back into it.”

Sandberg says the goats, pigs, and chickens at Love Apple Farm are undoubtedly the best fed creatures in Santa Cruz. “David brings the trimmings back from Manresa, they eat those, and they give us “black gold,” which in turn makes the soil richer.” Just at that moment one of the goats happily deposits some black gold near a stack of hay.

Kinch and Sandberg continue walking through the garden, looking at growth and bouncing ideas off each other about what to grow next. Currently, about 40 percent of the produce used in Manresa’s kitchen comes from Love Apple, but Kinch hopes to bring it up to 85 percent in the spring and eventually to 100 percent – something no other restaurant in the Bay Area is doing.

The chef and the gardener have a glorious symbiosis, from the planting of the seeds to the final phase of picking the produce and delivering it.

“Cynthia harvests early in the morning and we meet at Surf City Coffee Company and exchange coolers,” Kinch explains. “I give her back the trimmings from the night before and she gives me the produce for that day. It’s not like placing an order with a specific produce company – I open the cooler and decide the menu based on what’s there.”

And with that Kinch wanders off to another section of the garden. “The biggest challenge is learning how much to grow of certain vegetables – we just have to learn as we go along. Right now I want more carrots and potatoes, but there are too many cardoons,” his voice trails off as he disappears behind some tomato vines. “You can only use so many cardoons…”