You see it touted all the time in San Diego’s fine-dining restaurants: “Cuisine that embodies fresh seasonal products from regional farmers and ranches.” It’s a badge of honor that we’ve come to expect before sinking a big chunk of change into a plate of free-range chicken with micro greens.

Far less common is when those restaurants utilize their barely dead ingredients for making meals that don’t shovel conformity down our throats. The menu at Nine-Ten succeeds on all levels by drawing heavily from our local food bounty while appeasing deep-pocketed diners with the right amount of originality.

Nine-Ten is quintessential La Jolla. Upscale and warmly textured in design, it’s located in the circa-1913 Grande Colonial Hotel. A separate entrance allows you to bypass the doormen at the hotel lobby doors, which diminishes the intimidation factor by a few notches. Yet with a staff that is incredibly educated about the food and wine served here, you’ll likely feel overawed simply out of novelty. The restaurant is a veritable model for other proprietors wishing to raise the bar on their service approach, as it blends formality, aptitude and friendliness with every swap of your silverware.

My dining companion, a wine aficionado, put our waiter to the test with a lively discussion about some of the latest and greatest vintages on the list, which for the past three years received awards of excellence from Wine Spectator magazine. The waiter ended up crafting us a master plan that involved adroit parings with each meal course.

What appears like common dishes on the menu are and aren’t. From the first and second-course categories, for example, we tried the House Smoked Salmon made extra special with preserved Meyer lemons and big bleeding-heart radishes from Chino Farms. The Medjool Date Salad with aged balsamic offered bursts of celery and parsley to offset its sweetness. And the Hudson Valley Foie Gras, an omnipresent offering in many fine restaurants, took on extra depth with a slab of grilled anise-fig bread underneath.

Chef Jason Knibb steers clear of the common theme traps inherent in the culinary scene. There is nary a Southwestern or Asian-fusion dish to be found on his succinct menu. He instead draws upon his continental experience in the industry for crafting dishes that fall somewhere between California cuisine and the “slow food” movement. Select organics and pure cuts of meat and fish are his staples.

Also prefacing our entrees was a fly-by-night plop of Poached Maine Lobster dressed up with pearl onions, truffle broth and Israeli couscous. Given the dish’s convivial flavors, it was hard to condemn the petite portion size and $17 price tag. No less tantalizing was the Point Reyes Blue Cheese Tart sporting a very agreeable walnut crust. If it weren’t for the fresh fruit slaw on the side, one could easily eyeball this luscious creation as cheesecake.

Several glasses of wine later came the main event – La Belle Farms Duck with huckleberry sauce for my companion and Maine Scallops with roasted cauliflower for me. The duck was plentiful and expertly cooked. It came with Fuji apples dusted in five spice, plus a squash puree that we found a little pasty in texture.

The scallops were springy fresh, which indicated they probably weren’t pre-packaged or frozen. They were uniquely supported with pine nuts, blond raisins and brown butter vinaigrette – a nice change from the buerre blanc and garlic sauces I usually stumble upon.

Guests can throw themselves to the “mercy of the chef” to sample a full range of Knibb’s wizardry. The five-course tasting menu costs $60 per person or $90 with wine pairings. The latter is worth the extra price when you consider the global scope of the wine list, which journeys through some exclusive vineyards in France, Italy, Southeastern Australia and California.

Nine-Ten isn’t for those on a budget, unless you visit when the intermezzo menu is offered daily from 2:30 to 6:00 p.m. Then, the prices are slashed nearly in half for the same quality selections you’ll find during dinner.

Knibb tweaks the menu often according to what’s available on the market. You can be sure that what he fetches will be used constructively in an array of sauces, emulsions and accompaniments that can transform an everyday hunk of seared ahi into what seems like a first encounter with the fish. The evening we visited, it was adorned with carrot emulsion and braised baby leeks.

Long live those who dare to challenge the culinary proclivities that San Diegans cling to most.