Relais & Châteaux GourmetFest features fresh lead by David Kinch.

On his way to three Michelin stars, Exec Chef Adam Jones tumbles into drug addiction, mates with everything that moves, releases rats in a another chef’s kitchen while health inspectors lurk (and doesn’t remember doing it because he was so wasted) then finds sobriety by shucking exactly 1 million oysters in New Orleans. He proceeds to break plates and generally abuse his staff while making a comeback in London.

On his way to three Michelin stars in Central California, David Kinch did not do any of those things, though he’s shucked his share of oysters.

Fortunately Jones is the largely fictional centerpiece of a recent hit-and-miss foodie movie called Burnt, starring Bradley Cooper as Jones and co-produced by celeb chef Mario Batali, with plate-breaking expert Gordon Ramsay consulting.

“Eater at the Movies” columnist Joshua David Stein put it best when he announced the movie “does a disservice to everyone in the restaurant industry.”

“As a restaurant critic but even more, as a human, I want to know the food in front of me has been made with joy and love,” he writes. “Yet joy and love are the two things completely absent inBurnt. There is intensity and dedication. There is pathos and an omelette. But there is also fear, pain and suffering.”

Fortunately Kinch is all nonfiction and love, and the executive chef at Manresa in Los Gatos, the closest Michelin-starred restaurant to Monterey County (though that’s because somewhat arbitrary Michelin won’t roam this far south, and hence misses out on spots like Sierra Mar and Aubergine). He’s also as responsible as any chef in the country for bringing the brilliance of farm-fresh food to the center of the fine-dining conversation. In so doing, he represents much of what is absolutely right about the restaurant industry, no plates broken needed.

But he does evoke a special line from Burnt attributed to Jones’ deceased mentor: “God created oysters and apples, and you can’t improve recipes like that. But it is our job to try.”

That’s what Kinch has achieved: An ability to take celestial organic ingredients and give them elevated expression, even deepening their identity. He carefully harvests his elements – tomatillos and pole beans, sunchokes and strawberries, carrots and kohlrabi – from his own Love Apple Farms in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

His unique hand with what he pulls out creates a dramatic counterpoint to the likes of Batali, as GQ expressed in naming him its chef of the year not too long ago.

“You see, Kinch is something, but this part is hard to say, since he is the thing we can’t quantify: original,” Charles Bowden writes. “Mario Batali and other titans of American cookery adjust Italian or French regional dishes to the American palate or create a kind of goulash of influences called fusion. Kinch is a culinary Mad Hatter seeking the essence of things – a cabbage, say, or a tomato.

“Deep inside a fig lives a flavor, and Kinch has gone in there with compass and camera and the most sophisticated technique and brought this back, and what do you think of it? He is trained in European fundamentals, he is half-crazed by Japan, but his dish An Autumn Tidal Pool (abalone, sea urchin, shellfish, foie gras, mushroom, dashi-based broth) is something a fish might whip up when feeling homesick.”

Kinch’s participation marks a definite highlight of the annual GourmetFest in Carmel next week, Feb. 25-28.

Among his contributions to different dinners and tastings, he leads a doozy of a midday double feature Friday, Feb. 26. First he highlights some of his favorite Monterey Bay-area produce and products as part of a pre-lunch tutorial. Then comes a Champagne Taittinger interlude reception followed by a four-course meal also featuring Manresa’s pioneering pastry chef StephaniePrida, Hiroshi Nakamichi of Restaurant Molière (himself a three-star) and Nathan Rich of Twin Farms.

As Nakamichi’s pedigree helps demonstrate, Kinch’s credentials are the rule, not the exception at GourmetFest, where chefs descend from hyper-luxurious Relais & Chateaux properties from around the world, joined by international winemakers handpicked by event creator David Fink and a number of Monterey County’s most luminous boutique winemakers for events ranging from “A morning with the grand crus of Domaine Leflaive and Brice de la Morandiere” ($695) to the six-chef, six-course grand finale dinner ($350).

Ridiculous events leap out right and left, like a black truffle dinner led by Aubergine’s celebrated Justin Cogley, Mark Lundgaard of Restaurant Kong Hans Kælder, Chef Matt Zubrod of The Little Nell ($295) and the rarities dinner ($5,500) with 10 courses from three three-star chefs, including Kinch, and wines directly from the private cellars of de la Morandiere, Leflaive, JeanGarandeau of Chateau Latour, Alessandro Lunardi of Masseto, Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger of Champagne Taittinger and Taylor Fladgate.

Other events, including a vineyard tour-lunch with the Pisoni and ROAR families, have already sold out. Just don’t expect any of the ingredients across GourmetFest’s 18 events to resemble anything overcooked.

Quickbites

French Culinary Institute grad Greg Karjala has been a busser, dishwasher, bartender, line cook and sous chef. Now the former chef de cuisine at Sticks (at The Inn at Spanish Bay) is the new executive chef at Will’s Fargo Steakhouse & Bar in Carmel Valley (659-2774).

From the four-legged food beat: Big Fish Grill (372-7562) on the end of Fisherman’s Wharf serves a dog menu with grilled chicken breast or hamburger patty in a keepsake frisbee ($4.95).

Feb. 18 is also when Ted and Cindy Walter from Passionfish in Pacific Grove lead a talk/tasting ($25, 659-2640) at Holman Ranch Tasting Room on the sourcing and cooking of delicious, fresh sustainable seafood in association with Seafood Watch.

Middle of March is the current, still tentative open date for Alvarado Ramen as it goes through the permit gauntlet.

Two words: Nutella beignets. New and superb French-California small plates-wine bar Roux in Carmel Valley (659-5020) now does lemon curd, berry jam and plain beignets at 8am.

Tuesday, March 15, TusCA Ristorante (657-6675) hosts Mike Marotta’s Mambo Italian with live music from the likes of Ree Brunell, David Dally, Erasmo Aiello, Dave Marzetti, Ree Brunelland Marotta himself, with a four-course dinner (veal Parmesan! salmon puttanesca!) for $35.

Crema on Lighthouse in P.G. (324-0347) has a new lunch menu – appetite catchers include a Monterey Bay calamari po’ boy, loaded buffalo chicken wrap and tri-tip chili fries – and has started baking its own bread.

Best of Monterey County voting continues at www.mcweekly.com/bestof.

Standout Italian restaurant il vecchio on Central in Pacific Grove (324-4282) now pours world-class Belgian craft beer Leopold7.

The Salinas Valley Chamber’s Annual Awards Luncheon Thursday, Feb. 25, include a nod for La Plaza Bakery, and the Rodriguez family behind it, for best large business. Well deserved.

Carl Rogers: “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”