How quickly we forget the chemistry of cooking. We’re so busy stuffing our gourds on the go to remember that what sits on the plate before us is often an experiment in art and science.

Bakers appreciate such things. Beat your batter too long, and you’ll wind up with one dense Bundt.

Those of us who don’t bake look to restaurants such as Haven, a gold mine of technique-driven California cuisine. Open two months in Oakland’s Jack London Square, Haven is the third project from restaurateur Daniel Patterson, whose Uptown spot, Plum, is a source of pride for Oakland foodies.

At Haven’s helm is executive chef Kim Alter, a culinary scientist of sorts who has a bold way with meat and spice and a true love for vegetables. Haven’s tasty dishes, polished service and ambience are enough to ensure a return visit. But those who get a kick out of unique ingredients and trendsetting techniques will particularly delight in this little culinary sanctuary.

Take the sweet-and-smoky Shepard’s Pie ($25). It begins as pork butt that is brined for a full day before it’s ground and cooked down with a traditional mirepoix. Alter adds nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice and bay leaf for a warming, aromatic effect. She tops the dish with fried garlic pieces, rutabaga and a layer of whipped potatoes before sticking it in the wood-fired oven. It’s more comforting than Grandma herself.

I couldn’t figure out what made this dish so dreamy, almost like chai pork. We ate at Haven on a Sunday night, seated at the bar overlooking the open kitchen and wood oven. By Wednesday, I was curious enough to get Alter on the phone.

“We use pig’s blood to thicken it,” she told me. “I think it adds a lot of flavor.”

It certainly does. The technique is common in Northeast Chinese cuisine, and it gives food a rich dimension that is hard to resist. She gets equally creative with organ meats on the Bavette ($28), a flank steak decorated with pieces of glazed quince, sunchoke and two paper-thin strips of meat my husband described as “the best roast beef.”

Again, I scratched my head. Redial. “It’s braised beef heart,” Alter explained. She uses brine from Katz’s Delicatessen in New York to give the beef heart a kick, then fires and slices it.

“It’s a play on pastrami,” she said. “When I put ‘heart’ on the menu, no one would order it. The second I took it off, everyone did.”

Clever. But Alter is hardly a meat-and-potatoes girl. Her time in the kitchen at Ubuntu, a Napa institution for vegetarian fare, and more recently, at Plate Shop in Sausalito, where she tended her own 14-bed garden, cemented a love affair with vegetables. Most of the kitchen staff, including sous chef Nate Olden, pastry chef Matt Tinder and ice cream guru Carl Swanson, hail from Ubuntu.

You can feel it throughout the menu, from side dishes, like the crispy Brussels sprouts ($7) with mint, lime and garlic, so bright and delicious you’d have to sword-fight your kids for them; the delicate shaved watermelon radishes that give a fresh crunch to the rich, oily Bone Marrow starter ($15); or Swanson’s sensationally refreshing and approachable intermezzo sorbets of carrot and raw fennel.

The menu changes regularly at Haven, and given the unseasonably warm weather, some of these dishes may disappear before your visit. I know Alter is interested in bringing whole animal and vegetable preparations to the table in addition to more one-pot cookery, which satisfies her love of comfort food and keeps the kitchen happy and running smoothly.

That’s not to say service is an issue. Save for having to request bread twice before it arrived — the free, homemade rolls are in demand — and a shortage of scallops that required us to change one of our entree orders, we were happy. Our server, a member of the management, if I had to guess, knew the restaurant’s wine list intimately, down to the personal stories of some tiny, Old World producers. I loved that.

If you’re headed to Haven for a romantic occasion, you may want to request a table for the privacy and waterfront view or the dining room’s brick walls and elegant drapery. Otherwise, parties of two are offered spots at the bar. That’s not a bad thing. You get to see Alter and company in action and receive a complimentary amuse bouche and palate-cleansing intermezzo.

Our intermezzo, a scoop of raw fennel sorbet, was so delicious I wanted it to replace the blander rice ice cream made with sake that accompanied our dessert, a moist, generous slice of chocolate cake ($10) layered with luscious coffee cream. I pondered the art and science of every last decadent bite.