San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

"I've wanted to be a chef since I was 4 years old. I'm a humble dude with a skateboard in the back of my truck. I'll stand behind the ingredients and let them shine before I do." This is why Travis Swikard has brought a plate of lightly poached local veggies to the Happy Half Hour studio this week. It's both not what you expect from a chef who's trained under some of the biggest global names in French cooking, and exactly what you'd expect from a San Diego native. When he was working as the right hand of famed chef Daniel Boulud in NYC, Daniel would order the very best raw ingredients he could find, as chefs do. Swikard would unpack the boxes of in-season fruit and veggies. On the side of that box often said the same thing: "San Diego, California." So this plate of veggies—served with garlic aioli that's aerated with a PSI machine into a bowl of aioli fluff, then dusted with dehydrated herbs de Provence—is everything when it comes to explaining the lighter French food at Fleurette. Haurkei turnips from