Denver chefs face special challenges cooking a mile above sea level. At that altitude, meat and fish dry out faster and baking requires all sorts of adjustments. Meanwhile, the brutal winters, scorching summers and thin, arid atmosphere can be unkind to produce and livestock, making sourcing ingredients from in and around the city no easy feat. And yet an increasing number of hometown chefs are not only celebrating Colorado's farmers, ranchers, cheesemakers and foragers, but also growing produce and other food themselves. Their restaurants, many of which opened in the last few years, are bringing Denver in line with the farm-to-table ethos already consuming so many American cities. And the ambitious chefs are taking advantage of the urban gardens multiplying all over town. Frank Bonanno, a veteran Denver chef and restaurateur, recently bought land in the suburbs that he hopes will supply 'favas, lettuces and haricots verts' to his four downtown restaurants. 'If you're not growing stuff to eat, you're not a great chef,' he said. FRUITION The young chef Alex Seidel worked for Bonanno at his flagship restaurant, Mizuna, before striking out on his own in 2007 with this more casual place. Though his solo venture does not look like much more than a neighborhood bistro, his cooking recently earned him a spot on Food & Wine magazine's list of best new chefs in America. And while his menu seems pretty straightforward, the assemblage of cookbooks in the dining room -- by Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter and Michel Bras, among others -- offers a clue to the kitchen's ambitions. On a recent evening in June, Seidel's deliciously rich spin on pasta carbonara was a perfect case in point, its components telling the story: housemade cavatelli, a locally sourced egg cooked sous vide, boutique farm pork belly, and pea tendrils from the chef's own Fruition Farm. The late spring tendrils also made an appearance atop a bowl of velvety sweet onion vichyssoise that had been poured tableside around a timbale of English pea mousse. Seidel purchased the farm, just south of Denver, in early 2009, and has already planted lettuce, herbs, baby turnips and rhubarb. This summer he dispatched a sous-chef from the kitchen to work on raising sheep at the farm (and on turning their milk into cheese). Seidel is not dogmatic about keeping things local. He serves Nebraska beef (with grilled matchstick asparagus and a frothy bearnaise), Indiana duck (with buttery risotto and his own baby arugula), and fillets of Minnesota walleye (with tender gnocchi, plump snails and wild mushrooms). Regardless of their origin, the ingredients in these bold (and reasonably priced) entrees mesh beautifully. Fruition, 1313 E. Sixth Ave.; 303-831-1962; fruitionrestaurant.com. Dinner for two, without drinks or tip, is about $90. ROOT DOWN Root Down proudly announces its 'field to fork' credo with a shout-out to local suppliers on the back of the menu, but I am not sure it is the politics that keep this place packed. In the year and a half since it opened, the Highlands hot spot has become one of Denver's most popular restaurants (the No. 1 reservation on OpenTable recently) with a happy hour bar scene that seems to rage every night. The cocktails come cheap, potent and generous, served up by men and women in retro grease-monkey shirts. Their uniforms pay homage to the gas station that used to inhabit this space; a garage door was retained from the old days. In fact, Root Down is not just a restaurant; it's also a folk-art installation -- designed by the chef and owner, Justin Cucci -- with a wall in the bar area covered with brightly hued rotary phones and a bathroom wallpapered with branded recipe booklets from the '50s and '60s. 'To me, the greenest thing is something that already exists,' Cucci said. 'I thought it was cool to make art out of these things that were just castoffs.' On the night I popped in for dinner, there were long waits for a seat in the dining room and on the large deck offering great views of the city. I found a vinyl stool at the bar among the after-work crowd, where I tucked into hoisin duck sliders (like duck sloppy joes) and plump mussels in a red curry sauce made with herbs grown in planters surrounding the restaurant. The garden boxes occasionally supplement produce supplied mostly by a local wholesaler. By this winter, though, Cucci hopes to be growing all of his own herbs and lettuce. He said he's also planning a 'giant roof garden' on a second restaurant being builtin a defunct morgue a few blocks away. 'I look for buildings that have a history and a story,' he said. 'We're planning to keep some of the mortuary elements.' If anyone can manage it, it might just be Cucci. Root Down, 1600 W. 33rd Ave.; 303-993-4200; rootdowndenver.com. Dinner for two, without drinks or tip, is about $80. THE SQUEAKY BEAN This hyper-casual spot in the rapidly gentrifying Highlandsarea is the sort of neighborhood restaurant every neighborhood needs. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, it functions as an all-day clubhouse for locals, and it recently celebrated its first anniversary with a catered block party outside its front door (it's that sort of place). Adding to the chummy vibe, the Bean, as it's known to regulars, is a hodgepodge: a cafe, sandwich joint, cocktail bar and ambitious locavore restaurant, all packed into a space that housed a soda fountain in the 1930s. 'This place shouldn't work,' acknowledged Johnny Ballen, a co-owner, as I sat at the bar one evening nursing a Gary Coleman -- a short beer served in a rocks glass for a buck, added to the menu as tongue-in-cheek homage after the actor's recent death. Ballen's eccentric commitment to retro humor also accounts for the shrine to a feather-haired Farrah Fawcettbehind the bar, the old bingo scoreboard over the entryway to the kitchen and the hilariously titled signature cocktails. And even those concoctions have a local element: the Fred Berry(named for the actor who played Rerun on 'What's Happening') and the Pinky Tuscadero (a 'Happy Days' character) both feature fresh herbs grown in plots around town. At the closest one -- behind the Italian sausage company next to the restaurant -- peas, Brussels sprouts, fennel and horseradish had started to sprout during my visit. That homegrown produce also shows up on the quirky menu designed by Max Mackissock, the Bean's other owner and its supremely talented chef. At lunch the seasonal offerings are limited to soups, salads and sandwiches -- including, during my visit, a generous plate of golden roast cauliflower tossed with mejdool dates, and an exceptional take on the croque-monsieur filled with slivered potatoes, thyme-flecked bechamel and prosciutto. Lunch was top notch, but Mackissock's more ambitious cooking at dinner is the restaurant's real revelation -- like wandering into a dive bar and discovering Bob Dylan onstage. Seated at a sidewalk table on another evening, we passed around generous plates of white tablecloth fare: buttery polenta topped with plump morel mushrooms, crispy 'shake 'n bake' sweetbreads with poached pineapple and miniature basil, and a three-part pairing of asparagus and eggs featuring an egg cooked sous vide and asparagus mousse. Mackissock's food is all the more remarkable for the tight quarters it's cooked in -- a smoky sliver of a room with a couple of immersion circulators but no actual stove (a full kitchen is still in the works). The Squeaky Bean, 3301 Tejon St.; 303-284-0053; thesqueakybean.net. Dinner for two, without drinks or tip, is about $80. COLT & GRAY Year-old Colt & Gray, across the highway from the Squeaky Bean, is another spot with multiple personalities: part gastropub, part serious restaurant, it features a mix of up-market bar food and generously portioned, farm-sourced tavern fare. Unlike so many sparely appointed new Denver restaurants, the dining room here is more deluxe, with enormous black-framed mirrors, creamy upholstery and a centerpiece fireplace decorated with stag antlers. The chef and owner, Nelson Perkins, and his chef de cuisine, Brad Rowell,met in culinary school in New York (the restaurant is named for Perkins'young sons, Coulter and Grayson). And, indeed, there's Manhattan-style pomp to the amuse-bouches before every meal -- on the night I dined there, tiny spoonfuls of fennel panna cotta with American caviar. But that same propriety is at odds with many of the restaurant's starters and bar snacks. Rowell, inspired by brief stints at the Spotted Pig in New York and St. John in London, serves terrific nose-to-tail treats like crispy fried pig's trotters and marrow bones with caramelized onions and a micro-green salad from nearby Verde Farms. Local meat and produce are spotlighted in the entrees, but the best course of action here is to stick with small plates. Neither the mountain of sweet carrots with crispy-skinned chicken nor the simply grilled Long Family Farm pork chop was nearly as intriguing as the mini beet 'burgers' (beets and goat cheese on house-baked olive-oil financiers), munchkin gougeres,and potted crayfish that preceded them. Although Perkins says he would love to add a farm component to his operation one day, for now, homegrown produce comes in only occasionally from backyard patches tended by the cooks. 'They get pretty excited by their urban gardens,' he said. 'But the growing season is unfortunately very short.' Colt & Gray, 1553 Platte St.; 303-477-1447; coltandgray.com. Dinner for two, without drinks or tip, about $100. 