From the Ground Up

Paso Robles’ In Bloom reaches Michelin -level heights with a progressive approach to seasonal cooking

By Michalene Busico

The dish is simply called Citrus Salad, and you order it expecting the sort of thing you’ve eaten a million times during the transition from winter to spring. But there is nothing predictable about it at In Bloom. It arrives on a dark earthenware plate gleaming like a jewel on black velvet, a layer of brilliant magenta endive spears barely concealing bright sections of sweet orange and grapefruit, all resting on a swath of creamy ricotta. The flavors are compelling in a way “citrus salad” never is—and the secret, chef Kenny Seliger explains later—is a dressing made with fermented mango honey and a sprinkling of what he calls salsa seca.

“It’s a flavorful crunch that rounds out the salad really well,” he says. “It’s made with quinoa and pumpkin seeds and, well, I’m not giving away all the trade secrets!”

Every dish at In Bloom is like this—surprising and seasonal, delicious and beautiful—with a sheen of ease that conceals its complexity. The entire restaurant has a free-spirited, improvisational feel, with a burnished midcentury design, a lively crowd that ranges from

Poached Perfection: Trout with tomato beurre blanc, poached tomatoes, and marinated cucumbers

Paso Robles’ best winemakers to giddy tourists, and a soundtrack of vintage vinyl that owner Chris Haisma keeps spinning in the background. The menu of large and small shared plates highlights seasonal produce, but heightens it as well, with a kitchen arsenal of housemade fermentations, powders, pickles, purees, and elixirs. In November—just 10 months after opening at Paso Market Walk—In Bloom earned a spot in the Michelin Guide as one of best restaurants in California.

The menu is fully revised for each season, but small changes are made every day, as harvests come to an end or the small quantities Seliger procures from local farms run out and are replaced by something else. Sometimes changes happen just because Seliger decides a dish has run its course.

“We treat the menu as a living, breathing thing,” he says.

The delicious bowl of poached, pickled, and braised Brussels sprouts tumbled atop maple aioli. The knotty, earthy dill spaetzle, elevated by nubs of parsnip poached in tangy buttermilk. The barely sweet persimmon custard adorned with pearls of raw sunchoke compressed in thyme water, hazelnuts, and hoshigaki. All of these dishes will likely be gone by the time you’re reading this story. It is the edge of spring, but favas and asparagus are only a rumor and the focus is still on hardier stuff.

The dish called Pork Belly, for example, is really an ode to cabbage. “I have a love affair with it,” Seliger says. “I wanted to put as much cabbage on the plate as I could.”

Using a technique similar to cooking fish in a salt crust, Seliger wraps a whole cabbage in salty sourdough and roasts it for hours, until the outside is caramelized and the inside is steamed in its own flavors.

“It gives you a sour cabbage with a depth that I don’t think you can achieve any other way,” he says. He blends the cabbage with coconut milk to create a sauce for smoky kurobuta pork belly and bok choy.

Like many items on the menu, it has a direct link to Seliger’s childhood. He was born in Germany—his dad was in the U.S. Army and his mother is German—and he lived in a small town outside of Frankfurt until he was a teenager. His silky chicken roulade, with finely minced chicken subtly enhanced by fermented garlic, fermented chili paste, mushroom powder, and mushroom duxelles, is a refined version of the meatloaf and roulade he grew up on.

After moving to the U.S. for high school in Barstow, Seliger landed at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena. But his years in New York after that shaped his sensibility, working first for Thomas Keller at Bouchon on Columbus Circle, doing kitchen internships at Keller’s Per Se, and finally becoming a cook at April Bloomfield’s acclaimed restaurant, The Breslin.

So fresh: Fregola salad with burrata, green garlic pesto, and spring vegetables.

Bloomfield, his greatest influence, also instilled his love of charcuterie. The mustard pickles on his current menu are a nod to her, as is the glorious slab of terrine, which thankfully has not been rotated off the menu since the restaurant opened.

“At The Breslin, I learned that everything had to be perfect—if it wasn’t, it wasn’t leaving the kitchen,” he says. “The sous chef team went to the farmers market every morning and they were super hands-on. We got a Michelin star when I was there and that moment still sticks with me.”

Back in California, and working at The Waterfront resort in Huntington Beach, Seliger met his sous chef and creative partner, Ron Frazier. They created and ran Henry’s, the resort’s fine-dining venue, until it closed nine months later when the pandemic hit.

Around the same time, In Bloom owner Haisma and his wife, Nicole, decided they were ready to follow their dream and open a restaurant in Paso Robles. Like Seliger, Haisma’s experience spans major restaurants in great food cities: He managed buzzy spots such as Mastro’s Steakhouse in Beverly Hills and Katana in West Hollywood, as well as personal, chef-driven restaurants in Chicago for the Boka Group, before he and his wife opened several Chicago restaurants of their own.

When the pandemic shuttered them, as it had Henry’s, the Haismas decided to move to the place they had loved visiting for 15 years. They connected with Seliger and clicked. “Kenny and I are just on the same page,” Haisma says. “We finish each other’s sentences. We had a similar idea of where we wanted to live and what we wanted to do.”

Haisma manages the front of the house and the wine list, drawing on his friendships with Paso vintners to create what is probably the best list in town, given the range and quality, the older vintages, and cult bottles such as Sonoma’s sparkling Ultramarine. The ever-changing, by-the-glass list makes pairing individual wines with courses easy.

The cocktails, by Haisma and bar manager Kevin Hooker, emphasize seasonal ingredients as well as locally made spirits. A new addition, the Purple Rain, combines the tingle of dragon-fruit shrub with brilliant purple Krobar Butterfly Pea Gin, lemon, and raspberry powder. One of the original drinks on the menu, the Clever Margarita, is a savory variation made with carrot juice, Ancho Reyes chile liqueur, and a dehydrated carrot-salt rim. In addition to the regular menu, or booking the sixcourse tasting menu, it’s also possible to enjoy In Bloom from a seat at its lively bar.

Seliger and Frazier talk through menu ideas on their daily drive into Paso from San Luis Obispo, where they both live. They have the coming year mapped out in a continually evolving list of dishes that are tested until they achieve a version that works. (In the lab right now: pork liver bottarga, which will be shaved over a dark buckwheat risotto for a mineral tang without the texture of liver.)

Meantime, Seliger and Frazier are building relationships with growers throughout the county, including Mt. Olive Organic Farm, Bautista Family Farm, and Babé Farms. With a full year behind them, farms are growing specific items for In Bloom year-round in 2023.

“We’ll be getting more heirloom radishes, different types of beets, summer squash,” Seliger says, and then gets excited about an enormous winter squash farmer Matt Angle dropped off for him to try. It’s a smooth-skinned, dry-farmed beauty that weighs in at about 10 pounds and is called the North Georgia Roaster. “We ate it raw and it had a melon-type flavor,” Seliger says. “When you cook it, it’s similar to butternut squash. Now we’re working on pinpointing the flavors we want.”

The possibilities are wide open: the North Georgia Roaster might be served raw in a salad. Or used in pickles or preserves. Or, highly likely, in that spaetzle. Next winter, Seliger will have a whole crop

Purple Rain In Bloom, Paso Robles

This vibrant purple cocktail, created for In Bloom's spring menu by bar manager Kevin Hooker, uses gin from a SLO craft distiller, a shrub made with seasonal fruit, and aquafaba—the cooking water from chickpeas—to create body and a pretty layer of foam. For aquafaba, shake a can of chickpeas and strain off the liquid.

Ingredients

- 2 ounces Krobar Butterfly Pea Gin

- 1 ounce lemon juice

- 1 ounce aquafaba

- 1/2 ounce dragon fruit shrub (see ingredients and directions below)

- 2 cups raw organic and unfiltered apple cider vinegar

Directions

Add all ingredients to a shaker. Fill with ice and shake for 15 seconds, until properly diluted and a layer of foam forms at the top. Strain into a double Old Fashioned glass and garnish with a lemon twist.

To make the Dragon Fruit Shrub

1. Add 3 cups ripe dragon fruit (peeled and cut into chunks), 2 1/2 cups sugar, and 1/2 cup water to a blender, and blend until the mixture looks like jam. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 3 days, stirring twice a day.

2. After 3 days, strain the mixture through a mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth, pressing to extract all liquid. Discard the pulp and strain a second time. Combine the fruit liquid with 2 cups raw organic and unfiltered apple cider vinegar.

3. Transfer the shrub to a mason jar and refrigerate. The shrub is ready to use immediately, though the flavor improves after two to three weeks. It will last several months, stored in the refrigerator.