Manresa Restaurant

»Perfect

I have been going to Manresa's for over 7 years. The food, which was ridiculous when the place first open, is now just absurd, and the service will make you disappointed with every other restaurant you go to, because they are incredible. Synchronized serving, exhaustive knowledge by the servers, and the wine pairings are again, going to make you realize how bad most wine managers are. These...+READ I have been going to Manresa's for over 7 years. The food, which was ridiculous when the place first open, is now just absurd, and the service will make you disappointed with every other restaurant you go to, because they are incredible. Synchronized serving, exhaustive knowledge by the servers, and the wine pairings are again, going to make you realize how bad most wine managers are. These people make food and eating a high art. And Kinch is in there a LOT. He signed menus at my table twice, he's given a tour of the kitchen, and come to think of it, I have never visited the restaurant when he wasn't there.

I don't make much money, but my partner and I save up for a trip every year, and go with the premium pairing with chef tasting. Take your time, because although for four you can drop a grand including tip with no effort, it will be worth it. So worth it. Consistently, my mind is blown. I have teared up with happiness eating here. Kinch is a really amazingly nice guy, especially for a lunatic chef. (you have to be at least a little bit insane to care and pay attention to food like this guy and his crew do, but the result is amazing.) '

They have a local produce source (Happy Boy farms I think in the Santa Cruz Mountains) and it is so good you could eat it all raw (If you ever see a dish called "into the Garden" in the spring or summer you MUST order it.)

I started the last meal I ate there by thanking the servers for doing their jobs so incredibly well, and they really treated us specially. They brought extra amuses, spent as much time talking, (and even listening) about food with us as we could want, and I felt they appreciated me, and my party, as if we both understood the fact that we were in a small little circle of people who thought of food as so much more wonderful than mere sustenance.

Oh, the after dinner caramels are NOT to be missed, they encourage you to take several handfuls on the way out too. Do it. Soft and buttery and sublime.

Cocktails? Outstanding, their cocktail specialist is a wiz, she really spends the time to know what's good, hot, and now.

Atmosphere: They really have expanded and improved the atmosphere in the last seven years, and it now appears a lot more sophisticated and hip than it did in the past, and now it is the best decor in the area. The room is quiet but not oppressive, merely a bit subdued by the acoustics of the room and the servers manage to set the tone by talking at just the right volume to keep the background noise at a great level even in a packed seating. We had great conversation, while not feeling as if other conversations were too loud, the table spacing helped with this as well.

In the end, I can say with no hesitation that it's Manresa or The French Laundry if you are in California and want the best dining experience to be had. And I feel confident that Kinch is around Manresa a lot more than Keller is at the Laundry, and his staff is really special. I prefer it, frankly. It is a great love of mine to recommend it to people who have never had world class food and hear their impressions. No kidding, people usually hug me after they see me again after eating there for the first time, you understand? The first time you eat like this is frankly a life-changing experience, an awakening as to the possibilities of human sensation. If I sound effusive, or over the top, maybe you at at Daniel every weekend or something, or you just haven't had a similar experience; in that case, I urge you to try.-COLLAPSE (by Epicurion, created September 16, 2011)

»Manresa still has it

Went Thursday and took the tasting menu with a party of 4. It seemed like one couple had the full tasting menu, and they were about a course ahead of us. No menu was presented, as I had called ahead. On leaving, I asked for a copy of the tasting menu which they emailed me - from David Kinch's personal email. Was he really cooking for the 6 of us?

Menu was 4 amuse, 7 courses, 2 deserts, and the...+READ Went Thursday and took the tasting menu with a party of 4. It seemed like one couple had the full tasting menu, and they were about a course ahead of us. No menu was presented, as I had called ahead. On leaving, I asked for a copy of the tasting menu which they emailed me - from David Kinch's personal email. Was he really cooking for the 6 of us?

Menu was 4 amuse, 7 courses, 2 deserts, and the final amuse.

Petit fours “red pepper-black olive”
Strawberry gazpacho
Foie gras and cumin caramel
Arpege farm egg

Horse mackerel in flowering coriander ice, green strawberries
Summer squash shoots and razor clams in bonito butter, toasted seeds
Into the vegetable garden…
“Pil pil” of cod and artichokes, watercress
Monterey bay abalone , smoked lentils with porcinis
Suckling porcelet, onion and marrow tears with morels
Young lamb, nasturtium pesto and pine nut pudding

Roasted strawberries, yuzu sherbet and black pepper tuile
Fennel pollen cake, yogurt sorbet with honeycomb
Petit fours “strawberry-chocolate”

The menu doesn't do justice to the food, but more of a guide. Before the lamb there was something with sausage, a boudin blanc and a few other things, so it might have been a porcelet plus a boudin blanc. And the bread.

My sister got a different menu with veggies. Not adaptations, just different (and as good if not better) options. My favorites where the mackerel, the "squash shoots", the fois gras, famous "into the garden", strawberry gaspacho. Every dish was so complicated that bits of each worked brilliantly, and some not. It could be argued that some lacked a certain coherence, but not for me. More like each a cut gem, each bite a facet.

For fails: My arpege egg wasn't perfect, it lacked balance (more vinegar?). The slice of lamb I had wasn't good (although the bit of lamb loin was perfect). The cod in the "pil pil" didn't do much for me, although the watercress and artichokes are execellent. The fois gras was listed as "cumin caramel" and there could have been a little more cumin - it was unnoticable.

A great example is a bite that will haunt me forever. In the first desert was a single, albino, miniature strawberry. White and maybe 1/4" in length. The strawberry wasn't presented with a flourish, but hidden in the tuille. That single bite put the dish - and most of the evening - in perspective. Not listed on the menu, more of a hidden gem.

There was a certain amount of foam and MG. Two courses had foams. The coriander ice was an excellent bite.

My partner and I split the wine pairings. My gold standard for wine parings is now Le Bernardin in NY, and these weren't that good, but they were quite good. One was wrong (the gewertz near the beginning - a sledgehammer of a wine with the horse mackerel, likely the most delicate course of the evening - try a sake next time) but the others were quite good.

As good as the food was, certainly in my top-5-lifetime, the entire evening just dragged on too long. We arrived at 6, and left at 11. I'm used to a tasting menu being long, but there were 30 minute gaps between courses. 5 hours was just too much. If we could have arrived 30 minutes earlier, and the evening was an hour shorter, we would have enjoyed the entire evening to excellent perfection. My companions said they would have done one course less (I'd have taken out the lamb), just to keep from falling asleep. Or asked us to go stretch our legs in the garden - I started cramping up. In the long gap before the lamb, the other tasting menu table finished their lamb, got their deserts, paid and left. I dinged the tip a little for that gap, although it knew it was really the kitchen's fault. Front of house could have come over and chatted, pushed the kitchen a little, something. I had hoped to peek into the kitchen before leaving, but at that hour, we were happy to get out of the building - which is just the wrong spirit for such glorious food.

[And - we paid about the same for 4 people as we paid for 2 at TFL a few years back. Manresa FTW.]

The fact that most people stuck to the 3 and 4 course option should tell you something.-COLLAPSE / REPLY (4 Replies) (by bbulkow, created June 19, 2010)

(by rcoe, created March 12, 2010)