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His love letter will be to his wife and represented by a dish of beef heart tartare with foie gras and tendon puffs. He calls it "my heart on a plate."
"Foie gras adds the fat that the beef heart does not have," he explains. "When you combine these two together they're a perfect marriage and that's what I have. My wife has put up with me being a broke-ass line cook to me coming home broken down talking about the woes of owning a business. She is a super mom and is just amazing. She supported me so I could live the dream. This is my love letter to her."
His great-grandmother Rosalie Cosentino is the recipient of his thank you note. "My great grandmother is the reason why I cook these cuts of meat," he shares. "She'd cook the real peasant foods that she grew up with."
He asks for fresh pork blood and beef tripe at the butcher counter at 99 Ranch.
"One day I go to visit when I was a little kid and I smelled this horrid smell," he recalls of Rosalie. "She was cooking tripe, which is the stomach lining of an animal. God, did I hate the smell. How ironic is it now that's what I'm known for? So this is my thank you to my great-grandmother Rosalie Cosentino for helping me create who I am."
Heffernan doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about his letters; he figures they'll sort of arise after he thinks of the dishes. He's decided to try to recreate a lobster dish he made for his wife when they were courting, but Whole Foods has run out of lobster, so he selects some spot prawns as a substitute. Despite not really thinking the letters through, he's insistent that he's got the competitive advantage because he did his shopping quickly.
"Chris is consumed with his shopping expedition and that's a leg up for us because we just have to hunker down and do it," Heffernan says.
