When Mark Rampacek worked as a chef at The Four Seasons in Boston, he would get excited when the premium produce arrived. The vegetables came in small, deluxe boxes, and he wouldn’t have to peel away most of the romaine to get tender leaves.

Now that he and his partner, Lynn Ambielli, own Eden Vegetarian Cafe in Bar Harbor, he looks back on his Boston days and laughs. The vegetables the couple gets from local farmers make those leafy lovelies look like rabbit scraps.

“Look at this,” Ambielli says as she pulls a long, plump fava bean pod from the walk-in. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Yes – and it’s even prettier boiled, peeled and pureed into a pale green custard that serves as the base for a tomato tartlet.

At Eden, farm-fresh is standard and organic is the only way. And if you think vegetarian (actually, vegan) only gets as exciting as beans and rice, one bite of Rampacek’s Soy Seitan Cutlets with Cherokee purple tomato confit and wilted escarole will change your mind.

“Even my meat eaters love it,” said Regina Ploucquet, who has run West of Eden, a vegetarian bed and breakfast in Seal Cove, for the last nine years. “It’s not just the food, it’s the way it’s prepared. It’s so lovingly prepared, the dining room is beautiful, and the service is impeccable. Everything about it is first-class.”

On a recent afternoon, Rampacek, 33, roasted Maine potatoes and boiled fusilli while Ambielli, 34, breaded thin cutlets that looked like sausage. They were seitan, a meat substitute that Rampacek tweaks by adding silken tofu to make it softer. As they prepared for the dinner rush, they shared their philosophy on the restaurant business, their commitment to fair trade and the importance of buying locally.

“It’s so important to buy local,” Ambielli said as she fed frozen bananas – one of the few imported ingredients – into a juicer to make banana “ice cream.” “I want more restaurants to buy local. … Part of the experience of coming to Maine could also be these vegetables grown by people who are really struggling to make their lives here.”

“We have Maine stuff,” Rampacek added. “It’s just not lobster.”

He chuckles when he talks about restaurants in the tourist mecca that sell the typical Maine menu – lobster, corn, chowder and blueberry pie. On any given day, the lobster could come from Canada, the chowder might come in a bag straight from Massachusetts, the frozen corn on the cob may come from Iowa, and the berries may hail from New Jersey.

“Really, we have the Down East special,” he said.

While many people come to Bar Harbor to eat a shore dinner, a growing number of visitors and locals are seeking something different – customers fill Eden’s nine-table dining room on most nights. Many are referred by innkeepers and concierges on the island, but others find the vegetarian cafe on their own.

“There are definitely people flipping over backward that we’re here,” Ambielli said. “Acadia National Park is here, and that brings healthy, outdoorsy people here.”

The natural beauty of the area was part of the reason why the duo decided to stay in town. Ambielli, a New Jersey native, originally came to Bar Harbor as a student at College of the Atlantic, and when she graduated, she started working for George Demas, who owned George’s restaurant.

Rampacek came to the area with his former wife, who planned to attend COA for two years. They expected to move out west after she graduated, but both liked the area so much they decided to stay – just not together. Eventually, Rampacek took a chef job at George’s, he met Ambielli, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“It was totally a whirlwind,” Ambielli said, smiling. “Me and Mark fell in love that summer. Later we were going kayaking and he said, ‘What do you want to do? Want to open a vegetarian restaurant?'”

That was three years ago. In no time, they had signed their life away on a West Street property, which they promptly started renovating. Today, the small dining room is a placid oasis, with walls the shade of green tea, blond wood trim, white paper lanterns and a series of stained-glass panels that Ambielli created in her studio.

Rampacek got to work crafting a menu that at first included dairy and has since become vegan. But he hasn’t always cooked this way. His kitchen career began at age 13, when he went to work in a bakery in his hometown of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was the youngest member of his graduating class at the Culinary Institute of America, and he went on to work at The Four Seasons in Boston and the Duvall Hotel in New York before moving to Mount Desert Island.

While cooking at The Porcupine Grill in Bar Harbor, he began to notice a change in the commercial meat and fishing industry. When he started working there, he’d place an order for, say, 10 pounds of swordfish. It would arrive in one big fillet – part of a much larger fish. A few years later, the same 10-pound order would be the whole fish.

“I was always back and forth a vegetarian,” Rampacek said. “I always said I’d give up eating meat if I didn’t have to cook it. Then I realized I was the master of my own destiny and I didn’t have to cook it if I didn’t want to.”

Today, he uses traditional French cooking techniques and adapts them to a vegan menu heavy on fresh produce, tofu and soy products. While some cuisines lend themselves to a vegetarian menu – Asian and Indian come to mind – others, such as his grandmother’s Slovakian favorites, are a bit harder to replicate without meat.

“It was a learning experience, to change our concept,” he said.

“This was a whole new frontier creatively,” Ambielli added.

Ambielli has no formal culinary training, but she thrives on the energy of the kitchen and the pace of the restaurant business. The challenge of creating colorful, flavorful dishes that stimulate all of the senses appeals to the artist in her.

And the chance to work with local organic farmers – and the freshest ingredients – motivates both of them. Though the big summer harvest is in full swing right now, Rampacek already has visions of turnip souffles dancing in his head, and he’s been loading up on winter squash.

“I love cooking in the fall,” he said. “That’s definitely something we look forward to doing.”

Their menu, which changes daily, is a testament to seasonal cuisine. Whether it’s the crisp, flavorful Louisiana-Style Vegetable Cakes (which almost make you forget crab was even an option) or a slightly sweet, dill-scented corn chowder, each dish hits the mark. It’s no wonder one of Ploucquet’s guests said Eden was even better than San Francisco’s famed Millennium vegetarian restaurant.

“They’re raving about it,” Ploucquet said. “All of the vegetables are cooked to perfection. It’s very creative. Mark’s sauces and dips are extraordinary.”

The raves are no surprise to Ambielli, who takes a short break from assembling tomato tartlets to look over at Rampacek and smile.

“Mark just has this gift of making things taste really good,” she said to a visitor. Then she turned to him. “I think you just have a natural gift for it.”

Eden Vegetarian Cafe will hold its end-of-season fund-raising dinner (last year’s benefited the Maine Greyhound Placement Service and this year’s will benefit another animal-related charity) on Oct. 16. The restaurant is located at 78 West St. in Bar Harbor. For information or reservations, call 288-4422 or visit www.barharborvegetarian.com.