A Monterey Peninsula health food legend retires – and other nutritious niblets.

How’s this for a resume? Helped sprout the health food phenomenon, brew the clamor for coffee shops, seed the Civil Rights Movement and make Oprah who she is.

No less authority than the longtime local historian and author of The Hippie Dictionary, John McCleary, says this is what local Gil Tortolani – who is celebrating his retirement with a roast/party this Friday at Ol’ Factory Cafe – did during a decorated entrepreneurial career that included starting the area’s first alternative coffeehouse (Tillie Gort’s), its earliest health food store and its original recycling center. McCleary calls him the “Peninsula’s Johnny Appleseed of counterculture businesses.”

“The whole Hippie Era made huge changes in our communities,” says McCleary, himself a one-time employee of Tillie Gort’s. “People like him did this all over the country. If it wasn’t for hippie culture, Oprah Winfrey wouldn’t have a job – all self-help things started in that time. The coffeehouse thing, the health food things, not to mention the civil rights, anti-war, women’s movements… ”

While Tortolani’s look back is less revolutionary, he concedes he’s had an interesting run of things.

In 1969, at 25, with $500, he founded his “baby,” the now revered Tillie Gort’s (a play on his high school nickname “Gilly Tort”), and still proudly notes its laidback “grab a guitar, read some poetry” atmosphere drew Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, among legions of others.

Soon thereafter his wife and a partner couple launched The Grannery in P.G., a fresh produce-artisan bread-earthy-goodness grocery almost universally acknowledged as the local precursor to Whole Foods (in fact, WF bought out the Grannery upon its Peninsula arrival).

After selling there, Tortolani kept charging, planting Ecology First Foundation to harness the area’s recyclables before absconding to Montana with 17 locals to start a commune. After a brave go at the Big West’s winters (which reduced their clan to eight), the business itch dragged him back to a deli elsewhere in the state – before a post-divorce bout at trying his luck as “a pro gambler” in Reno didn’t go so well.

Soon he was drumming up another venture in Monterey. What began as a way to explore his Italian instinct to soak olives for customers at a wine-tasting room on Cannery Row blossomed into Gil’s Gourmet, a specialty snack powerhouse that distributes treats like anchovy-stuffed olives and Pinot Noir-soaked, chocolate-covered cherries to shops and wineries in all 50 states and Canada.

But at 65, having just sold GG and its Sand City headquarters – and despite a 41-year of businesses – Tortolani says he’s ready “to go gently into that good night.”

“After all,” he adds, “I signed five-year no-compete agreement. I could be sued.”

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With apologies to Oprah, the tastiest legacy of the “counter culture” going mainstream was on display last month in Carmel when former Aubergine staffer Todd Kerlin, now of Napa’s Ubuntu, returned to his to team with Aubergine Exec Chef Christophe Grosjean. Ubuntu is a natural, albeit extremely evolved extension, of the natural foods movement, dedicated to shucking the idea that vegetarian is tofu, granola and secretly meat envious – and rather triumphantly rich and dynamic. (Their efforts even earned them number 2 on New York Times’ list of top new spots.)

The “vegetable-driven” evening soared with carrot “arancini” with kumquat chutney, artichoke barigoule with shaved porcini, cucumber gazpacho, and wild asparagus with morels – and that was just a fraction of the appetizers. (Meanwhile Wine Director Thomas Perez choreographed exquisite accompaniment and David and Kathleen Fink further demonstrated they have assembled something special with L’Auberge, which bodes well for the next endeavor, Hotel Luca in Napa’s Yountville.)

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Here’s one three-course weekend of field freshness seasoned with stars: Friday, June 12, Ag Woman of the Year Luncheon at Paraiso Vineyards (755-1480); Saturday, June 13, Craig von Foerster from Sierra Mar accompanies Earthbounds’s Mark Marino on a farm walk (625-62190); Sunday, June 14, Pebble Beach’s Ressul Rassalt’s doing another farmers market demo, this time in Marina, noon to 1pm (384-6961)… Chef Raghavan Iyer – he of the 2008 Sustainable Seafood ambassador award from Cooking for Solutions and author of celebrated 660 Curries – is back Sunday, June 14, for a cooking demo and lunch at Quail Lodge ($75, 888-828-8787)… Bistro Moulin’s doing some fun things for its second birthday – $2 pommes frites and $2 French bubbly from June 15-July 15. (333-1200)… Parking near Chef-owner Didier Duertre’s Moulin can be nastier than a week-old sardine. Thankfully Cannery Row Business Association has developed a savvy way to bring folks down to the old standbys like the Whaling Station and recently resurrected reinvigorated institutions like Blue Fin Billiards (reopening this weekend): Free parking for locals after 4pm.… For Gil, a little hippie spirit to close: The World According to Monsanto – a look at what one corporation’s doing to genetically engineer and patent the world’s food supply – screens at the Peace Resource Center 6:30pm Tuesday, June 16. 238-6675… Make love, not war.