EDIBLE: Local chef heads to Tijuana to feed orphans.

It wasn’t a question you want to ask, but here I was asking: “Do these kids know they’re going to die?”

You’d think after a couple of visits and a heartfelt commitment to help terminally ill orphans build a garden – and later a bigger farm – at their orphanages in Tijuana, Mexico, local chef Matt Beaudin would know the answer.

He doesn’t.

But a theory why emerged as I learned more about his mission. Borrowing a page from those kids, he finds himself far more focused on how they’re going to live than when they’re going to die. And that’s the most important point.

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The new ¡Viva Baja!: Life on the Edge exhibit at Monterey Bay Aquarium drips with inspiration. Staghorn hermit crabs stagger the imagination with the massive size of their shells, while they stagger under the weight. Jawfish dazzle with light and movement. Angelfish are angelfish. When it made its soft-opening last month, the wows included Kauai-style cured shrimp and smoked trout tostaditas with charred chili aioli, cilantro slaw and lime crema.

That hints at Beaudin’s work at the Aquarium’s ambitious cafe and restaurant, where he introduces a spring menu next week. Highlights from a peek include Manila clams with chorizo ($18), a fried shrimp roll with local chili-pepper relish ($20), Far West Fungi carbonara ($18), a Chinatown duck burger ($18), an Arctic char club with Korean barbecue pork belly ($18), and a spring panzanella with green, purple and white asparagus ($14).

Jerry Torrise of Jerry’s Oceanfresh Seafood is among the local purveyors who click with Beaudin’s approach; in fact, they collaborated on the rarest seafood dinner of them all, when they invited old-school local fishermen to the Aquarium for a Beaudin-prepared feast this winter. No real agenda. Beaudin and Torrise wanted to bring together parties that traditionally butted heads over marine protected areas and other issues to break bread.

“He wanted to be mano a mano,” Torrise says. “He wants to break barriers.”

Beaudin loves the purpose with which the Aquarium operates. “You can’t come into work here and not be inspired,” he says. “There’s no other job like it.”

Now a different Baja project awaits. It doesn’t involve any Aquarium connections, but it too comes with mighty purpose, and a different sort of life on the edge.

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Not much time passes talking with Beaudin before international travel comes up. Time building out a farm and eco-resort in the West Indies from essentially scraps taught him resourcefulness; a year in Rwanda starting up a hospitality school resonates that much more.

“I found what I wanted to do: To give back,” he says. “Food is a language, one of those things that spans worldwide, and gives me the ability to expand, too. If you can change lives, it’s an absolute gift.”

That’s the first thing he refs when asked, Why do this orphanage thing? To visit Rwanda, he left a job at Gaylord National Harbor Hotel near Washington, D.C., overseeing a 2,000-room hotel and four restaurants. “I was done with the ‘I want, I need,’” he says.

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The first cookoff was Baja Culinary Fest, when Beaudin met up with Adolfo Delgado, a kind soul who helps with orphanages in Tijuana. The next qualifies as a cooking challenge to make Iron Chefs rust right up with sheer nerves: Feed 100 orphans Christmas dinner with two turkeys and rice-and-soy supplements called MannaPack (from a group calledFeed My Starving Children).

The orphans are all diagnosed with AIDS. Eunime por Tijuana formed in 1995 to give kids more than a death sentence. The name came from the mother-daughter pair Eunice andNoemí Quezada. Now a nonprofit, Eunime acts on the illness as an opportunity to extend grace and life force.

Beaudin took away some cooking lessons from doing that Christmas dinner via intense community mobilizing, “past-due” food that was perfectly fine, produce donations and turkey-rice-soy soup. More directly, he took away a lesson on life that doesn’t happen without engaging your energy and exposing your emotions: the kids weren’t anything but vivacious, which meant death had to wait at the door. Enough of that, and a new paradigm emerges. Positivity can come from both possibility and produce.

Beaudin still doesn’t know how the ministry transmits the mortality message to the children. Instead he marvels at their infectious joy and the fact the kids were praying… for him. “They’ve found happiness in something more than stuff,” he says. “It’s deep shit, man.”

To help, reach Beaudin through Twitter (@ChefBeaudin), Instagram (@chefmattbeaudin) or 605-275-5099.

~QUICK BITES ~

Youthful Benoit Petel, a native of Paris, makes for a good fit at one of the county’s finest French places, Andre’s Bouchee (626-7880) on Mission between Ocean and Seventh. More on the blog, www.mcweekly.com/edible.

Some of the best fish tacos in town, at a fraction of the cost elsewhere, hail from a PT Catering food truck parked in Seaside. To the blog for more.

Cultura Comida y Bebida comes to Carmel this summer on Dolores between Fifth and Sixth, making one of the very best restaurant blocks in Central California even better. Longtime local sommelier Sarah Kabat-Marcy, who has worked at standout spots including Passionfish and Sierra Mar, is part of the creative team behind it. More online.

“Pasta, Pizza and Professionals” lecture-dinner-networking continues Monday, April 11, at Cibo Ristorante Italiano with Menko Rose, creator of Skilligence, on “Tips and Tricks to Improve Your Memory” (free; $24.95 dinner; 594-1500).

Two tacos + two beers = $10.95 at Los Amigos (646-8888) on Forest Avenue in Pacific Grove 3:30-5:30pm Monday-Thursday.

Some Fisherman’s Wharf places are mislabeled as tourist traps. Daniel DeCamp reviews one that’s worth checking out on p. 36 (Scales Seafood and Steaks). Its sibling Old Fisherman’s Grotto does killer local deals. And Cafe Fina (372-5200) has robust three-course locals sunset specials for $14.95 11am on. Locals get free parking with ID at the waterfront lot too.

Bay of Pines (920-3560) has resurfaced after being dark for months and is now open for lunch 11am-3pm daily (dinner for parties of 12 or more too).

Longtime local hospitality talent Jacques Melac is now on the team at Fifi’s Bistro Cafe (372-5325) on Forest Hill in Pacific Grove, where the wine values rival any in the area, and the food contends for Best French on our readers poll annually.

The reporter asked, “Why did you play so hard, Joe?” And DiMaggio said, “Because there might have been somebody in the stands today who’d never seen my play before, and might never see me again.”