Salt Wood’s new chef, Ben Hillan, uses smoke as deftly as other ingredients.

Chef Ben Hillan has a problem, and it’s of his making.

Like other fine dining chefs, he is committed to sourcing quality ingredients with an emphasis on local – which is hardly a challenge when Salt Wood Kitchen & Oysterette borders Monterey Bay and the Salinas Valley.

But Hillan added pork chops to the menu, and the best meat comes from Spain’s Black Iberian hogs which feed on acorns, developing a nutty savor. The marbling is so delicate that it begins to render almost from the moment a chop is pulled from the cooler.

“Our biggest issue is that it sells out,” the chef observes.

Unlike other items, Hillan can’t simply call up a vendor and have more chops delivered that same day. Even when the source is local, he doesn’t always know what’s coming. The grilled whole fish, for example, depends on the catch at Moss Landing.

The chef is versed in local, seasonal ingredients and wood-fired cooking technique. His New York strip is a reminder that steak wants to nuzzle up to flame, to shed its uptown airs and take on a rugged demeanor. There is a bittersweet haze to the beef that calls to mind cords hacked by axes and ash drifting from crude stone firepits.

Yet this is still a rich steak. Under the hardy veneer, the meat is plush – juicy and velvety. It’s like greeting stark collars, black tails and white tablecloths inside a rough-hewn pioneer cabin. Some of the tallow is rendered to cook the side of potatoes, giving the humble spuds a similar character, coarse but also dignified.

That Salt Wood has both a large open grill in the restaurant and a smoker out back allows the chef to play with fire. Hillan is developing a process – one that suits his demanding nature – for bringing smoke to chicken that is currently brined, steamed then fried to order.

But his touch with wood is readily evident. Scallops cooked with flame develop a gruff sweetness. Served shell-on with kumquat and pistachio, the dish is one of the chef’s summer additions to the menu.

“You can’t replicate it,” Hillan says of smoke and fire. “We treat it as an ingredient.”

He took the helm at Salt Wood six months ago and almost immediately began featuring smoke. While the menu is decidedly ingredient-driven, it remains approachable. Alongside Wagyu beef and imported Ibérico pork are such familiarities as a burger, fish and chips, even mac and cheese.

Smoke opens up different possibilities, even with common preparations.

Still, Hillan does bring a lot upon himself. Take the artichoke crown, a new appetizer. The chef exalts the meek flavor of the thistle with laurels of aerated hollandaise and black garlic aioli. A patch of edible soil serves as a reminder of its earthbound nature. It’s a conspicuous starter, inspired by who knows what.

“I wanted to take an artichoke and make it look like a sunflower,” he explains – sort of. “That was a random thought.”

Hillan brings Mexican notes to risotto dressed with roasted corn, cotija, ancho chile and crema. The idea came during a Mexico City bachelor party for his brother, during which the chef paused for some late-night elote.

“I thought, ‘How can we elevate this?’” he recalls. “It’s a fun dish.”

Foraged mushrooms were given the kabayaki treatment, a Japanese method more typically used for grilling fish that involves repeated coatings of a sweet and sharp baste. Hillan chose to plate the fungi with a fried egg on top, and it’s a reminder that there is something pleasing yet unfathomable about a fried egg done right.

It’s not the yolk, although in this case the warm mass eases into juices caused by kabayaki, taming the sweetness just enough. But it was that thin ring of egg white crisped to an inviting brown. It provides a delicate crackle, but also a faint earthy note that teases the mushrooms and the soy glaze.

The past tense in reference to the mushroom plate is a reminder. An emphasis on seasonality means saying farewell to some favorite dishes, at least until the rainy season comes around again. But it’s an ethic as important to Hillan as the trinity of wood, fire and smoke.

“It’s something as simple as a carrot,” he says about fresh, local, seasonal vegetables grown right. “It’s weird to say, but it tastes like a carrot.”

SALT WOOD KITCHEN & OYSTERETTE, 3295 Dunes Drive, Marina. (831) 883-5535, saltwoodkitchenandoysterette.com.