Last night, I met a friend for dinner at the restaurant Manresa in Los Gatos, CA. The restaurant and its chef, David Kinch, have recently received quite a bit of positive press in the NY Times magazine, Gourmet magazine and -- most recently -- it was cited as #38 on a list of the "Top 50 Restaurants in the World," as compiled by London's Restaurant Magazine. The emphasis at Manresa is on the creative use of locally procured ingredients. Although Mr. Kinch was absent from the kitchen last night (he's in London this week), the kitchen was ably run by his long-time sous-chef Jeremy. Both of us opted for the tasting menu, which we left up to the chef (as in Japanese omakase).
Here is what we ate, and the wines that we had with it:
amuse bouches: red pepper and black olive "petits fours"
This gives me a picture of what the chef is doing. Here he subverts the standard idea of petit fours by swapping savory for sweet flavors. It's an intellectually stimulating way to start the meal.
Mexican lime and hibiscus "cocktail"
Yes, hibiscus! This consisted of a lime granita with a small infusion of tequila, atop of which was a red hibiscus jelly (for lack of a more descriptive term). The combination was very refreshing and stimulating to the palate.
Parmesan churros
Mashed potato and parmesan shaped into logs and deep fried. Nice finger food.
Strawberry gazpacho
This is apparently one of the signature dishes of Manresa, and it was a standout. The strawberry was present in small quantity, just enough in fact to "brighten" the tomato in the gazpacho, which also was seasoned with chives and lime.
Salt cod bunyols, honey and sherry
Frankly, I don't remember much about this dish -- I must have been distracted.
The "infamous egg"
[The name derives from some flak the chef took from some foodies online regarding whether he'd properly attributed this dish to L'Arpege restaurant, where it originated]
A soft-boiled egg is opened up and, on top of the egg is placed some whipped cream and maple syrup. I know that it sounds bizarre, but it works and is a fascinating combination of flavors, not at all bizarre in taste. This BTW is another signature dish of Manresa.
With all of the above, we had a bottle of Pierre Peters Cuvée de Reserve Blanc de Blancs Brut Le Mesnil Champagne. I didn't know this producer, but it came recommended by the staff and was very good: not much toast, citrus and green apple with a very pronounced mousse. It reminded me quite a bit of the few Champagnes of Egly-Ouriet that I've had.
This was followed by:
"Twice cooked" foie gras with delta asparagus
A very thin slice of foie gras (the twice cooked bit I don't quite get) with lots of black pepper was draped over an asparagus tip. Very enjoyable combination.
Japanese fluke, sashimi-style, with olive oil and chives
I don't remember much about this dish, either, probably because it was eclipsed by what followed.
"Just shucked" scallops with oceanic gelée
This was another standout dish. The scallops were either raw or very lightly cooked, minced and reassembled into a football shape. Surrounding it was the gelée, which had a salty/citrusy character. The scallops were delicious on their own, but the gelée did add to the overall flavor as well. Totally delicious
Artichoke soup with chickpea frites and manchego
This was essentially a reworked version of French onion soup, with the chickpea frites standing in for the bread and the shaved Manchego replacing the Gruyére. The thick asparagus soup was poured over the solid ingredients, which slowly softened. The soup was rich and wonderful, and the solids provided interesting surprises when encountered.
Skate wing with morels, fava bean pesto
To me, this could have been a Charlie Trotter dish. All the ingredients were carefully showcased, and the combination of flavors provided the interest. The skate wing had been grilled and combined beautifully with the small, soft morels. The fava bean "pesto" tasted fresh, in contrast to the other flavors.
Rouget and clams a la plancha, sweet and sour sauce
Manresa's custom-designed kitchen includes a griddle-like plancha for searing fish on. In this dish, small squares of rouget (what's the English name for rouget?) were seared on the plancha and served with a very subtle "sweet and sour" sauce. I don't honestly remember the clams.
These dishes were eaten with two wines that I'd brought along:
2002 Roland Lavantureux Chablis
Initially a bit reticent, this opened up after 30 minutes to reveal the character that I remembered: good minerality, lemony citrus and green apples. As time wore on, the minerality became more pronounced.
2003 Manfred Felsner Grüner Veltliner Moosburgerin Kremstal
A lighter-styled GV, but one that still has great substance to it and no signs of flabbiness from the hot vintage of 2003. It showed typical pepper and floral notes with citrus and some kind of melon on the palate and a nice, crisp finish. Not the biggest GV, but good varietal character and a nice complement to many of the fish dishes we had.
Then, the final round of savory dishes:
Local abalone with slow-cooked veal cheeks
For me, this was the highlight of the dinner (and another signature dish!) The square of pan-fried abalone alone would qualify as a treat but, placed atop a small pile of braised veal cheeks, it was taken to a new level. Both components were excellent in their own right, but eating them together proved to be a revelatory experience. Surf and turf reinvented.
Milk fed Pennsylvania pouillard stuffed with porcini mushrooms
This was a delicious dish, reminding me quite a bit of dishes I'd had in France. Coming immediately after the previous dish, it suffered a bit in comparison.
Season's last choucroute with suckling pig and boudin noir
Two different parts of the pig found their into the choucroute, and the house-made boudin noir sausage was tremendous. The sauerkraut was somewhat subdued, giving this choucroute a bit of refinement.
Baby spring lamb and merguez, goats' milk whey polenta
I mostly remember the house-made merguez sausage, which was garlicky and good. The creamy polenta also provided a great backdrop to the meats.
With these dishes, it was deemed prudent to get a red wine, so we opted to get by the glass:
Robert Sinskey 2001 Los Carneros Pinot Noir
A very decent Pinot from one of my favorite producers of Carneros PN. Soft, lush, with clear varietal fruit and a hint of smoke. It was very good with the veal and choucroute, but a bit overwhelmed by the lamb.
The desserts:
Green apple and rhubarb sorbet
Of the two, the rhubarb was startlingly good.
Pineapple beignets with passion fruit
Delicious combination of the cooked pineapple and the passion fruit.
Strawberry soufflé with kaffir lime ice cream
The soufflé itself was great, but the combination with the lime flavor proved fasinating, even at this late stage of the meal.
Chocolate marquis and devil's food cake Petits fours "white peach-chocolate"
By this time, I'd basically had enough, so didn't really sample these last two desserts well enough to have much to say about them.
The meal lasted just over four hours, though at no point did I feel either rushed or impatient for the next course. One point worth making here is that, although there were 21 different plates presented to us, the portions were quite small so that, even by the end of the meal I was not overly full. Instead, the cumulative impact of all the different flavors was almost kaleidoscopic. The overall impression of the cooking was certainly the creative use of high quality, fresh ingredients; beyond that, however, was the desire to create (what for me is) a new synthesis. This is not "fusion" cooking in the hackneyed sense, but rather a coming together of several different traditions with this ethos of highlighting the ingredients themselves. At the same time, I never felt that the combinations were forced or that the chef was trying to do too much in a given dish. Each dish had its own distinct character, and it was the sucession of dishes of differing character that provided a lot of the excitement.
All in all, a most memorable meal, conceived of by a rising superstar of a chef. The wines, while good, were in the end overshadowed by the cooking, but the cooking was what I was there to experience after all...
One final thought: with the growing popularity of chef's tasting menus such as this one, it's becoming increasingly difficult to select a single bottle of wine that will go with a meal. Restaurants such as this will usually have a selected list of wines by the glass to accompany the tasting menu, but at times patrons will not want to partake of those wines. In such cases, restaurants will need to increase their supplies of half bottles to provide greater flexibility to their patrons in choosing wines to go with the food.
Mark Lipton