Manresa

A few months ago I finally had a chance to dine at the world-famous, two Michelin starred restaurant, Manresa. To say I was excited was a bit of an understatement. From having friends who have worked with David Kinch, following his famous food-blogger girlfriend, and hearing rave reviews about how their produce is hand-picked fresh every morning from a farm nestled in the Santa Cruz mountains, it was quite a build-up of expectations. With stellar service from a friend's sister who coincidentally is a server there, the meal did not disappoint.

Manresa is renowned for using seasonal local produce in their offerings, which allows the chef to create a different menu every evening depending on what's available or in season. Being early summer, the chef's degustation menu was aptly named "The Late Spring Garden."

The meal started with a couple petit fours. At first sight, I thought, "oh madeleine and pate a fruit." However, the chef cleverly disguised savory starters in normally sweet dessert packages. The pate a fruit was red pepper flavored, which complemented the black olive madeleine. Tricky!

Up next was a local milk panna cotta with abalone. I love abalone. I'm not quite a fan of panna cotta. I always feel as if someone hasn't put enough gelatin or eggs in to make a proper flan. This panna cotta, however, was quite tasty. The crunchiness and spiciness of the radishes contrasted the silky shitake mushrooms, abalone, and mild panna cotta.

After I scraped the panna cotta container dry, our lovely server Andrea brought out some garden beignets with vinegar powder and aged goat cheese. I adore anything that is properly fried. I could have eaten at least a dozen of these. Those leaves? Yes I ate those too. Yum.

Up next we were given a short reprieve to collect ourselves and our taste buds. Our bread course arrived with raw-milk butter from Normandy cows. Love Apple Farms apparently has their own cows too. Though I doubt that they imported the cows, I can only assume that they're of the same breed as their bovine cousins across the pond. Our server mentioned that only special tables got this butter and it was okay for me to eat it all. Even sans bread.

Now I can officially say that I've eaten a raw baby cow. If you mention steak tartare to most people, they'll generally be a bit squeamish. And sure, in the States with our poor standards on beef, I'd understand. But raw fish, shellfish, and even chicken? Been there, ate that. Veal was a new one to add to the docket though. This dish was a veal and albacore tartare served with pickled cabbage and some sort of sauce that wasn't short of deliciousness.

I really appreciate high end restaurants providing copies of the menu, because at this point, the dinner was starting to blur. One happy-tummy blur. The next dish was assorted courgettes, pistachio with a nasturtium vinaigrette. So pretty.

And that's not all, it had cultured cream gently poured over at table-side.

The next dish was simply "Into the vegetable garden..." It was a colorful assortment of leafy greans and flowers with some sort of foam. On the right corner of the plate was something that suspiciously looked like dirt. Yes. DIRT. After some inquisition by yours truly, I found out that it was ground chicory that was made to resemble dirt. How clever.

Of course they couldn't serve a salad without a soup shortly following. We had a saffron and shellfish broth with yarrow and sorrels. There were bits of barely poached lobster floating in the broth.

After the broth we were served sea bream with almond, orange, and fennel jam. I loved the crispiness of the sea bream skin and the tender flakiness of the meat. I'm often confused what to do when there are powders on the side of the plate. Do I sprinkle a little on? Do I dip the main dish into it? I supposed I could mash it all together, but I think that would defeat the point and be a bit sacrilegious after someone has gone through the effort of carefully plating each element.

I think the next dish was one of, if not my favorite dish. I love runny egg yolks. Runny egg yolks with chicken? Yum. Runny egg yolks with mushrooms? Even better. Runny egg yolks swimming a warm broth chicken broth? Gastronomical heaven. Yeah I'm simple like that. This dish was chicken, egg confit, celtuce, and morels.

What the heck is celtuce you ask? I had the exact same question, and wasn't shy to ask my server. If I'm paying $$$$ for a meal, I better know what I'm eating, especially if its a main ingredient of the dish. Alas, I digress. Celtuce. If celery and lettuce had a lovechild, it would be celtuce.

While I was still in an egg-yolk induced euphoric state, our server brought out our next dish. Yes that's a rib you're looking at folks. One little rib, from one little lamb. Mary's lamb if you please. I love my meat rare, and this rib was rare enough you could mistake it for tartare. The 'spring lamb' was served with cucumber, blueberries, juniper and olive. I ate it off the bone... my server said I could.

As a palate cleanser, I had a garden tisane. Look at that action shot! Andrea was very accommodating with my food paparazzo musings.

For dessert, we started with a raspberry cremeux with white chocolate, anise hyssop and verjus sorbet. I can't help but look at the white chocolate stick and think about how much I hate working with chocolate. More power to the pastry chefs and chocolatiers who do though!

And of course to celebrate, a chocolate brownie with a tuile. The candle on the ardoise/slate.. is such an elegant alternative to jabbing it in the cake.

I think this was my favorite dessert. It was a pistachio parfait, with cherries, cherry pit crumble, red wine meringue and cocoa nib. I've never eaten cherry pits, but apparently you can crack the pit, and inside is something reminiscent to a nut. Cherry pits are small..and that's a lot of small nut cracking. I really liked how they made a ring of cherry gelatin to encircle the pistachio parfait.

Our server brought us another dessert that only the 'special' tables received. The flavor? Old fashioned vanilla ice cream made from that same Normandy cow milk. It was the most speckled vanilla ice cream I've ever had, which had to mean the number of beans per liter of milk must have been startling.

Though I started feeling as if I couldn't stomach any more food, literally, the next dessert arrived. As I've mentioned, macarons are all the hype now. These macarons were salted coffee. Though I love salted caramel, I wasn't too fond of the salted coffee, though the flavors did work. It just made me think of accidentally pouring salt into my coffee instead of sugar.

Weighed down by all the meal courses and my camera, I forgot to take a picture of the last mignardise. However, the chef cleverly brought the meal full circle, as the last plate looked exactly like the first, the petit fours. Our server joked, "okay we're starting all over again!" These petit fours however were strawberry pate a fruit and chocolate madeleines. The dinner was amazing, the service was spectacular, and I even got a mini tour of their kitchen (it wasn't as big as you'd imagine). I'm definitely looking forward to my next visit.

Manresa

320 Village Lane
Los Gatos, CA 95030

Tel: 408 354 4330