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“If they look at the sign, closely, and they feel it out, and they get it, then they are going to think, ‘Oh, that is Jerry Garcia. He is holding a staff. He is parting the Dead Sea.’”

Get that? Dead Sea, not Red Sea. But there is more to see inside, including a mural featuring a young-looking Garcia, the Grateful Dead lead guitarist and musical icon who has been dead for almost 20 years, appearing in a cloud of smoke expelled from a hookah pipe. (Jeff Blackburn, a Toronto artist, is responsible for the sign and interior mural. He is not a Deadhead).

There are Grateful Dead concert posters sprinkled here and there on the walls and, on a recent morning, the Smashing Pumpkins playing over the sound system.

Out back, on a shaded patio, sat Mr. Rose, sipping an Americano while swearing to me that he is not a “hippie,” although he did study cooking and live in San Francisco for five years. He was young then. The Grateful Dead — and Garcia — were still a going concern. He lived near the band’s former house in Haight-Ashbury. He went to Golden Gate Park on Sundays to listen to drum circles. He saw his first Dead show. He saw 29 more. The Deadhead chef was born.

“The best experiences I ever had in my life, looking back now, were at Grateful Dead shows,” he says. “I was never really a hippie, but I really, really enjoyed the scene: the culture of it, the camaraderie of it, the music of it, and you either got it or you didn’t get it. It was super cool, especially experiencing it out there.”