All the Way

Why? Because it kept money coming in. And having a working (and staffed) restaurant at his command gave Brad a chance to test out much of the new menu he'll soon introduce. Finally, the space is so lovely and the kitchen so good that there was really no reason to shut things down. But on April 15, the restaurant will officially become Colterra.

I called Carol last week to ask what the Heaps had on tap for the place, and was frightened right from the start when she started talking about their "mission" and "beliefs" and the Latin translation of the new name (it means "to cultivate the earth," by the way). Now, it's not that I think there's anything wrong with having values and a sense of duty in one's life; it's just that buzzwords like "mission" and "beliefs" and anything translated from the Latin make me nervous. They smack of politics and proselytizing -- two things that make me itch when they start rubbing up too close against the food world.

"It's all part of our mission here," Carol told me. "Local, organic, sustainable, ingredient-driven. A real farm-to-table concept. Seasonality. We believe this is absolutely what that place calls for, in that rural community."

I asked if she thought that they'd be able to go 100 percent in that direction -- a standard question for anyone in Colorado who starts talking about greenmarket menus and organic produce, since the supply chains are not yet sufficient to provide enough natural, organic, sustainable, straight-from-the-garden items to make up a full menu. The response I anticipated was the one that I get from everybody: a simple "no," usually followed by laughter and the occasional lecture on the infant state of sustainable agriculture in Colorado. This is where Carol surprised me.

"A few things -- butter and salt, you know, that we'll have to get from the main guys," she said. "But, yeah, we're going to be pretty much 100 percent."

"Really?"

"Yeah." No hesitation at all.

When I asked how this was possible, Carol explained that they had very good contacts among the farmers and ranchers in the area; that Colorado's Cure Farm was going to put in a series of organic gardens on the Colterra property so that they could grow some of their own produce; that they'd found suppliers for all-natural, grain-fed meats and sustainably harvested seafoods; and -- perhaps most important -- that the menu itself would be styled after those done in the restaurants of Southern France and Northern Italy, where local produce, market-driven menus and sustainability were not political or social stances, but simply the facts of life.

Still somewhat suspicious, I delicately asked Carol where all this was coming from. Honestly, I found it hard to believe that a chef like Brad Heap -- a serious pro, classically trained under the likes of Ducasse and Georges Blanc -- would willfully put himself into a position where he'd be complicating his supply lines, depending exclusively on purveyors who themselves operated at the whims of nature and the market, hamstringing himself by promising something that (as I saw it) would be virtually impossible to deliver. Maybe I'm somewhat backward when it comes to these things, but I simply couldn't understand why a chef would intentionally put politics and principle before cuisine.

"Well, Brad read this book..." Carol said.

"Omnivore's Dilemma?" I asked, interrupting her thought.

"Yes! Have you read it?"

Of course I've read it. Many people I know consider it not just the most important food book of last year, but possibly the most important food book of a generation. No one who reads it is unaffected (I shared my response in the June 22, 2006, "Survival of the Fittest"), and I know many people who were profoundly changed by it. Hell, I was profoundly changed by it.

All of a sudden, what the Heaps were doing made sense. Brad may be the first chef I've heard of who's opening a restaurant specifically as a response to what he learned in the pages of Michael Pollan's book, but I'm sure that he won't be the last.