Los Gatos, Calif., is a picturesque community in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, an hour south of San Francisco. It’s not far from the Pacific and the counterculture sensibilities of Santa Cruz, not far from the rich farmland of Watsonville, and not far from the fruit and nut orchards in the fertile Santa Clara Valley, now known widely as Silicon Valley.
Manresa is an unpretentious, low-slung ranch house on a narrow downtown alley. Considered by many to be one of the best restaurants anywhere, it completely reflects where it is, as well as chef-proprietor David Kinch’s very personal vision of what a restaurant should be.
Kinch is emphatic when he says: “There are two characteristics that enable restaurants to transcend the ordinary. First is that someone has a vision; it isn’t thematic, and it isn’t decided by committee. The other is a sense of place—the restaurant couldn’t be anywhere else than where it is.”
Many critics agree that the formula works. Opened in 2002 and named both for a medieval Catalan town and a stretch of nearby beach, Manresa has garnered steady acclaim, including Restaurant magazine of London’s Top 50 Restaurants in the World in 2005, Gourmet magazine’s 2006 Top 50 U.S. Restaurants, two Michelin stars in 2007 and 2008, and a James Beard Award nomination in 2008.
Of Kinch’s cooking, San Francisco food writer Patricia Unterman says: “I could taste all the beautiful ingredients—and was completely charmed by the elegance and originality of his cooking. He’s one of the few who achieves that balance. Too often, highly composed cooking obscures the natural beauty of the raw materials. He somehow captures flavors in intense and magical ways—the way good poetry reveals emotion.”
Kinch’s path to world-class cooking in a provincial California town began in New Orleans, where by age 15 he was washing dishes and making salads at Commander’s Palace under then-chef Paul Prudhomme.
“My first culinary influence was New Orleans,” he says. “Food and wine are intertwined with culture there, on all levels of society.”
Thoroughly smitten, Kinch went from high school to Johnson & Wales, graduating with honors in 1981. He cooked at the Hotel de la Poste in Beaune, France, and in New York’s Quilted Giraffe. Next were stints in Fukuoka, Japan, at Silks in San Francisco, Germany’s Michelin two-star Schweizer Stuben, the three-star L’Esperance in St. Vezeley, France, and the two-star Akelare in San Sebastian, Spain.
By 1993, Kinch was executive chef at Ernie’s, a French fine-dining landmark in San Francisco. From 1995 through 2001, he operated Sent Sovi in Saratoga, Calif., with then-partner Aimee Hebert, honing his fresh French- and Catalan-influenced style to critical accolades and an appreciative Bay Area audience.
The 2002 move to Los Gatos was prompted by the desire for building ownership and a larger workspace. Manresa’s 750-square-foot kitchen, provides natural light and ample plating space, compost bins, and an aura of cleanliness, comfort, and efficiency. Cooks face one another around a central island; each station has storage, ovens, stovetop, refrigeration, water and power within reach.
Designer Jim Zack created an elegantly casual decor for the 68-seat dining area, with beamed ceilings, Persian carpets over painted concrete floors and raw-silk draperies.
“Los Gatos is a bedroom community for Silicon Valley; Santa Cruz is nearby,” Kinch says. “We certainly couldn’t have servers in tuxes here. People understand casual elegance, that it’s not a shortcut. We want to make customers feel welcome and happy.”
General manager Michael Kean agrees, saying, “We’re correct, but not formal.”
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A former pastry chef and professional dancer, Kean choreographs the complex floor service as a smooth performance.
“It’s tight maneuvering, and each table gets numerous courses,” he says. “The wait-staff must be constantly aware of timing, movement, flow and physical space. Servers move in the same direction, clockwise or counterclockwise.”
The staff of 43 is roughly divided between kitchen and dining room. There are two seatings per night. “I want people here for a three-hour hedonistic experience of exceptional food, wine and service,” Kinch says. “A great restaurant should be like an oasis, where you leave everyday life behind.”
Of course, the heart of that experience is food. Diners can choose between two prix-fixe options, selecting either four items from the “spontaneous and seasonal” menu, or the chef’s tasting menu, a vast series of carefully crafted bijou dishes that leave you, as Unterman says, “not stuffed, but excited.” A signature amuse bouche is the Arpége farm egg, which is named in honor of Alain Passard’s Paris restaurant, gently soft-boiled and served in its shell with sherry vinegar, maple syrup and chives.
“This restaurant is ingredient-driven and our cuisine is vegetable-based,” the chef says. At least 80 percent of Manresa’s vegetables and herbs are grown exclusively for the restaurant at Love Apple Farm in the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains. They’re harvested each morning for the evening’s menu, without seeing the inside of a refrigerator.
MENU SAMPLER Pea leaf and pistachio croquets Tasmanian ocean trout confit, horseradish custard, preserved plum and sorrel Foie gras and abalone together, in a tidal pool… Wood pigeon baked in salt, potatoes cooked in hay Dry-aged beef roasted in its own fat with anchovy and pepper Jasmine pastille with sweet pea tendrils, fried peanuts, and grapefruit sorbet Bitter chocolate with sea salt cracker, dried apricot, and sourdough ice cream Selection of four courses, $95
But the menu is by no means vegetarian or strictly local.
“I didn’t open this restaurant to make a political statement,” Kinch says. “My goal is the best possible product for my customers. We grow our own vegetables because they’re better vegetables. But I use 250 purveyors.”
Lamb comes from Sonoma County and woodcock from Pennsylvania.
“This food is all about the details,” Kean says. “David’s always looking for the best chicken, the best maple syrup, the best butter.”
Kinch’s cooking combines textures and flavors in surprising ways, and ingredients are treated extremely gently.
“We don’t boil or fry things,” and meats are slow-cooked at low temperatures, Kinch says.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Michael Bauer says, “Kinch knows how to orchestrate a brilliant succession of flavors,” and he characterizes the kitchen as “the stage of a true artist.”
The idea of fine dining as an art form comes up regularly in conversation with Manresa’s staff. Sommelier Jeff Bareilles, who has an arts background, calls Kinch “an artist in the highest sense.”
“I see his process, his experimentation and the finished products,” Bareilles says. “Dishes are like delivering jewel boxes to the guests. In making objects, an artist is lucky to keep a viewer’s attention for two or three minutes; here we have guests fully engaged for three hours. It’s like the chef makes the paintings, and I select the frames—that’s how I feel about the wine.” Bareilles does so with a 550-bottle wine list and an additional 60 bottles he uses specifically for course pairings.
“I’d say 40 percent of our guests never look at a menu or the wine list,” Bareilles says. “I think this means we’ve earned their trust.”
It’s impossible to understand Manresa without its symbiotic relationship with Love Apple Farm. The partnership with Cynthia Sandberg, an attorney turned farmer, grew out of a meal.
“My first dinner at Manresa was a revelation, a life-changing experience,” she says. “Not only because of the food, but because it led me to the career path I’m on. The farm couldn’t exist without the restaurant.”
While the restaurant might exist without the farm, it certainly wouldn’t be the same. The affiliation with the garden deeply affects the menu. Kinch, who visits the farm almost every day, finds inspiration there.
“I like to entice David with new stuff,” Sandberg says. “We produce about 200 varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers.”
Manresa’s most popular dish is iconically named “Into the vegetable garden,” influenced, Kinch says, by a Michel Bras’ gargouillou of herbs, vegetables and flowers that reflect the surrounding landscape and season. Kinch’s version can contain up to 30 garden ingredients, raw and cooked, dressed with vegetable juices. This is complemented by “edible dirt” made from dried potato, parsnip, and roasted chicory root, the intensely flavored mixture resembles coffee grounds.
“Over time we have learned how we can use different elements of a plant at different times of its life: roots, stems, seed, flowers, buds, leaves, shoots,” Kinch says. “We began to view the dish more as a concept, a mirror, and not just as a plate of food. We wanted customers to feel as if they transported themselves to the garden.
“This dish has now been on our menu for two years and the name never changes. But the dish does. Everyday. Like a day in the garden.”
