Geoff Gardner: Sel de la Terre -- Boston, MA.

His knowledge of baking evolved as a hobby. "I started reading books and recipes. It was really just playing around with the dough and the starter." Today Executive Chef Geoff Garner keeps a white starter and rye starter. They are as important to the quality of his bread as the flour, salt,

and oil he uses. "Bread, in general, is a big theme of what we do here," he comments of his two-year-old Sel de la Terre. "I have always been very passionate about bread-good bread, real bread. I think that's unique among restaurants. I mean, getting bread at a restaurant is automatic, but to most restaurants it's just a giveaway item. They don't make any money on it, so they don't put a lot of time, effort, or money into it. I feel very differently. I don't think you can have a great restaurant and not have great bread." Gardner credits his grandfather with first tweaking his interest in food, "When I would visit him, he would make a deal with me, and he thought this was just great. I would get to pick the menu one night and he would pick the menu the other night. I would choose pizza on my night, but the following night, his selection would be calves liver and onions. He was a great cook and he took a lot of great pleasure in having me experience foods that he'd experienced on his travels all over the world. He taught me to have an appreciation for what's out there. It's really had a profound impact on me."

Though the appreciation for wholesome food was instilled in Gardner early, the call to be a chef had yet to possess him. "I was looking for a job and I walked off the street into an Italian restaurant near my apartment-I figured I could wait tables. They didn't need waiters but they needed cooks. I had no experience, but they didn't mind. Almost immediately I fell in love with it," Gardner recalls. Before long, he had mastered every position in the kitchen. During a summer job on Nantucket Island as a short order breakfast cook, he learned of a hospitality management program at Boston University. He applied and was accepted. "Once I knew I would be going to Boston, L'Espalier was recommended to me as one of the best restaurants in Boston," Gardner explains. "Even though I had worked in a handful of restaurants and none was of the caliber of L'Espalier, I figured I would keep knocking until I got my foot in the door." Sure enough, when he applied for a job, there were no openings. Disappointed but determined, he took a couple of other jobs, attended class, and every couple of weeks, returned to the restaurant to see if things had changed. In a few months, there was an opening. "That's kind of the way it is with restaurants--timing," he surmises. He accepted a base position and worked his way up, a climb which lasted eight years and culminated with an Executive Chef position and partnership with long time mentor Frank McClelland at the sister restaurant of L'Espalier, Sel de la Terre. Here, their shared vision of a hearty cuisine from the South of France is realized in the provincial menu. The marriage of robust and elegant ingredients creates an earthy combination of all that Gardner has embraced throughout his career.