California Road Trip: Manresa

This is the last post of the Cali road trip series, and I reserved this meal for something special. David's birthday and our one year anniversary were coming up, and since we wouldn't be able to see each other on the actual events, I wanted to surprise him. Unfortunately, he wasn't surprised at all. I asked him when he guessed that we were going here, and he said that he knew before the trip even started ಠ_ಠ

Our dinosaur napkin. I stole the idea from Reddit and requested this, hoping that since we were celebrating a lot, they would honor our request. I was successful yesss, although the staff must've been rolling their eyes that these kids were dining at their fancy restaurant (they were 100% professional and sweet). 

The menu. We were too full for the chef's tasting, so we settled on the prix fixe :( But it was still good

Excited David is excited

I'm pretty excited myself

Garden beignets and crispy leaves. They were kind of like airy cheese-filled donuts. The leaves were kale chips. 

Tomatoes, barely cooked, flowering coriander ice. Like a cold tomato soup.

Summer clams, lightly smoked, tomato and lemon ice, savory granola. Yum, this was when the meal began to pick up. I loved the fruitiness and the combination of textures.

The started unlimited bread service at this point in the meal. This is the baguette, aka the best bread they had. I ate at least three of these, as well as tried their other three options (rosemary olive, sourdough, and poppyseed). It took a lot of self control to turn the bread guy down, he was so persistent. 

Summer clams, lightly smoked, tomato and lemon ice, savory granola- Abalone and roasted sunchokes, seaweed persillade. Very interesting textures, although I have no clue what a sunchoke is.

Salmon marinated with herbs and citrus, beets. This was such a gorgeous course.

Duck roasted in salt crust, fig, and wild fennel confit. Yum I'm a huge duck fan.

A transitional chamomile mint tea to ease us into the dessert course

Reine claude plums with buckwheat and Crescenza, saba. I have no idea what all the words in the course description mean, but I'll take it because this was delicious.

Cards to us, signed by the staff...

And two complimentary desserts, one for each occasion. Chocolate cake with caramel ganache, just perfect.

Raspberries and yellow peach curd, basil and peach leaves, old-fashioned vanilla ice cream. A light and fruity course to finish off the meal. This was my favorite dessert of the night.

Chocolate and lemon verbena macarons, as concluding remarks. Macarons are my favorite, so it was like they read my mind. 

The restaurant started to empty

We took a picture by the fireplace. They then proceeded to offer us fleur de sel caramels and we were allowed to take as many as we wanted. I took 4 and felt like a hog, but in retrospect, I should've just stolen the canister. I ate them on the plane ride (also with a bread/cupcake thing gifted to us with the check) and they were incredible. 

What a beautiful, memorable place.

Manresa

320 Village Ln

Los Gatos, CA 95030

(408) 354-4330