restaurant with 90 percent of its produce. Having a farm dedicated to his needs helps Kinch narrow the farm-to-table gap. But the chef insists that his relationship with Sandberg goes beyond locavore politics. "Love Apple isn't about touting organics or getting all your ingredients within a 50-mile radius," he says. "It's about giving people pleasure by putting the best possible product on the plate." The farm also gives Kinch access to produce throughout its life cycle, encouraging the kind of seed-to-flower cooking (not just the fennel's bulb but its pollen, too) that has fertilized so many local menus of late. Sandberg grows malabar spinach; ficode glaciale, a slightly tart, crunchy ice plant; and an intensely flavored herb known as quilqia (think of it as cilantro on steroids), among other obscure items that are now a little less obscure because of Kinch. On the beautifully terraced 22-acre property tucked into the folds of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Sandberg and her crew employ biodynamic practices developed by Rudolf Steiner -- burying cows' horns filled with dung and stags' bladders stuffed with yarrow in the ground as a means of enriching the soil, for example -- that raise an eyebrow or two. But Kinch is a believer, at least in the results. "Does the cow horn help? I don't know," he says. "What I do know is that all of these practices force you to pay attention to the most minute details. They require you to think about everything you're doing, which is