It was a decade ago at Cucina 24, and I was waffling about whether to venture into the new-to-me territory of chef Brian Canipelli's tasting menu or stick to the known and beloved arena of the restaurant's phenomenal housemade pastas and pizzas. This bizarre entry among the tasting menu's courses gave me pause.

"Trust me on this one," the server assured me.

It was sound advice. Turns out "odd plants" was just that: a collection of herbs and greens grown or foraged in the mountains. I no longer recall what kind, but I do remember they were nothing especially fancy. Skilled, intentional plating made the humble assortment of leaves, stalks and even tiny flowers look regal. They were served with an addictive white anchovy dipping sauce.

It was such a simple thing, this modest little dish. Yet it undid me -- the greenness; the individual flavor notes of each plant singing with terroir; the unobtrusive yet superb condiment to be added or ignored at the diner's whim. I've never forgotten it, and in the years since, I've realized that it totally uprooted and transformed my previous ideas about the art and craft of food.

To the deep sorrow of Asheville, Canipelli died suddenly on Feb. 6 at the too-young age of 46 while on the line at Cucina 24. He had been honored as a StarChefs Rising Star Chef in 2013 and was a 2016 semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation's Best Chef: Southeast award.

But whether serving burgers from a food trailer at Burial Beer Co., painstakingly developing a Basque-inspired menu to open Burial's Forestry Camp restaurant or offering a cozy, Italian wine/antipasto/pizza experience at Contrada -- all things Canipelli did along with opening his Italy-meets-Appalachia concept, Cucina 24, in 2008 -- the chef quietly impressed with his culinary deftness as well as his kindness and humanity.

In the days since his death, fans and friends from the Asheville community and beyond haven't been shy in their collective outpouring of grief over the loss of both the chef and his cuisine. James Beard Award-winning chef Katie Button remembered past birthday meals Canipelli had prepared for her, praising him as one of the best chefs she's ever known.

"But his talents as a chef aren't the things that will stick with me, or the thing that I keep thinking about since he passed," she wrote on social media. "It's how he made me feel when I was around him."

Food writer and longtime local service industry worker Jonathan Ammons wrote eloquently in social media posts of carefully executed, globally themed dinners Canipelli used to regularly host for Asheville restaurant employees. He admired the chef's dedication to supporting and uplifting the service community.

Ammons also detailed Canipelli's culinary brilliance, curiosity and work ethic -- "an obsession with process, technique, thoughts, ideas," he wrote. "No matter how strange the process, it was worth the effort for Brian just to know what it was like."

Canipelli had a motto, Ammons says, that perfectly summed up his ethos as a restaurateur: "Always make it worth more than they are paying for it."

My odd plants experience definitely fits that description. As does, I would venture, a meal local artist Paul Choi described as one of his "top three personal food stories" in a recent Xpress letter to the editor. Many years ago, Choi remembers, he was walking downtown when he ran into the chef, who urged him to stop by Cucina 24 that evening because he'd scored some coveted white truffles from Alba, Italy. Wisely, Choi adjusted his dinner plans accordingly.

Sitting at the restaurant's bar overlooking the open kitchen, Choi watched the chef toss the pasta for his main dish. "He plates it and the entire kitchen staff surrounds him and watches as he pulls out a truffle and shaves an ungodly amount on the pasta, making it rain from above his head," Choi recalls.

"He then walks the dish towards me, and when he was about 6 feet away, a wall of pugilistic pungency hit me in the face. My eyes watered from the smell. I thanked him as he set the dish down. That first bite was a penetrating flood of delicious truffle and butter and garlic and pasta flavors. ... It was one of the most intense food moments I've ever had." For that evening's unforgettable experience, Choi says, his bill was a whopping $20. (Read the full letter at mountainx.com.)

Thank you, chef, for giving Asheville so many meals and memories worth so very much more than we paid.