Manresa

We may be among the very last Bay Area foodies to eat at Manresa, David Kinch’s well-sung Los Gatos restaurant.

We’ve known about it for a long time: Food bloggers everywhere raved about it even before one of our own started dating the chef. But the last time we thought about going, we bought a new house with a repair list that made Santa Claus’ naughty-and-nice list look like a quick read. We had to wait another year, and our eagerness grew as we read each new glowing report.

We worried that we had heard too much hype. Could the restaurant live up to the gushing praise we had read? Yes, in fact, it could.

In our 15-dish tasting menu, virtually every dish was a little gem: Intense flavors, flawless technique, and elegant presentation. It’s the kind of meal that inspires me, a good cook by most accounts, to improve and stretch my abilities. It wasn’t just good: It was revelatory.

From the starting amuse of red pepper gelée with black olive madeleines (cleverly mirrored with a mignardise of strawberry gelée and chocolate madeleines) to the “Autumn Tidal Pool” (uni and foie gras in a rich broth) to the pork belly with soubise (an onion bechamel) to the banana crème with chocolate fondant and meringue kisses, we had little transcendent moments with each dish. A waiter would describe each course as it appeared at the table, and our anticipation rose to such a pitch that we stopped talking entirely when, after the amuses, a waiter arrived with a basket, which he boldly presented to our adoring eyes as “unsalted butter with sea salt and house made bread.”

One can opt for a wine pairing with the tasting menu, but we decided to pluck bottles from the restaurant’s extensive list. We started with a 2005 Stéphane Tissot Chardonnay from the Arbois, moved to a 2005 Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc from Paso Robles, and finished with a 2004 Dönnhoff Schlossbockelheimer Kupfergrube Riesling Spätlese from the Nahe (as someone with a high regard for Terry Theise, though, I was sad to see that the wine buyer had opted for a grey market import of this bottle instead of Terry’s). A dinner of white wines might seem odd, but in fact only one course in the menu, the slow-roasted lamb, might have preferred a red wine.

We walked back to our hotel that night, warmed by the company of friends — meriko joined us; I had two dates for the evening — and the memory of the meal we had just eaten. Every so often on that walk home and at breakfast the next morning, one of us would speak the name of a dish from the menu, and we would all take a moment to remember and sigh.

So let us add our voices to the chorus: If by any chance you haven’t already eaten at Manresa, make your reservation as soon as you can.

Berkeley Bites

Our new house doesn’t have a kitchen. It did when we bought it, but before we moved in we turned that room into a miniature Christo installation, using plastic drop cloths to enshroud every surface while we sand down our smurf-blue walls and ceilings, prime them, and paint them — we’re just beginning to emerge from that process. This has been a glimpse into our lives when we remodel the kitchen in the next few years.

In the meantime, we’ve spent dinnertime exploring the restaurants in our neighborhood. Here are my thoughts on them, but I’d love to hear yours about good, inexpensive spots in our area. (As a related aside, Melissa discovered this sprawling list, a website that predates blogging, of restaurant reviews compiled by a few dedicated souls.)

Breads Of India
Our closest restaurant is a revered spot in this neck of Berkeley’s woods. The ever-changing menu offers a diverse spread of delicious Indian food, but the real treat is the naan. Each day, the restaurant makes four or five different kinds. The menu suggests naan pairings with the main courses. Garlic naan is always on the list, but the others change every day. Each naan is the size of a dinner plate: One naan and one samosa for each of us makes a filling (though not well-balanced) meal.

Picante
This always-busy Mexican restaurant is a popular weeknight stop for us. (And yes, for you purists, its cuisine is more Americanized than authentic.) The food’s good and filling, and the prices are cheap.

Fellini’s
I didn’t have high hopes for our little neighborhood Italian restaurant, especially since they trumpet their “Best Vegan Brunch” award. But they not only use dairy and meat in their non-vegan dishes, the restaurant turned out to be pretty decent. Their steamed kale was intriguing, though I feel like I can make it with more balanced flavors, and the pasta was good. The small wine list featured some esoteric Kermit Lynch bottles, including at least one of his very few Italian imports and his Cuvée Kermit Lynch wine. And Tuesday nights are No Corkage nights, which I support.

Sea Salt
Though the prices prevent this from being an everyday restaurant, it was perfect for Melissa after she spent a grueling day sanding our kitchen walls to prep them for painting. A nice selection of oysters, great seafood, and an excellent wine list make this a top choice, but you pay for what you get.

Barney’s
Every now and then, we get a real craving for Barney’s sloppy hamburgers, only to be disappointed when the reality doesn’t live up to our memory. But when you have only a mild craving, the Bay Area chain cooks up a decent burger.

Lanesplitter Pizza
We rarely ordered pizza to be delivered to our apartment, so ordering from Lanesplitter was sort of a novelty. But the pizza was so-so, and I don’t think we’ll order from them all that often.

Gioia
Gioia, on the other hand, is worth the 5-minute drive to pick up a pie for ourselves. Though the pizza slices were floppier than I might like, the toppings had a deep flavor. (The sausage on ours was from top-flight charcuterie — and friends of OWF — Fatted Calf.)

The Boat Shed, Nelson, New Zealand

Note: We're trying out one of those slide show widgets that are all the rage. If you're reading this through RSS, you'll probably need to click through to see the slide show. Let me know what you think.

“Are you having a moment over there?”

My eyes rolled back in my head as Melissa talked. She told people later that I had tears in my eyes as I bit into a jelly-like slice of purple-red yellowfin tuna. The edge had a hairline of sear and a band of black and white sesame seeds; everthing else on the fat slice was raw but warm. “It's what seared ahi tuna should be,” I wrote in my notebook, “but never is.”

It's the best fish dish I've ever eaten. It grabbed the title from the tender, meaty salmon fillet stuffed with mozzarella that I ate at the same restaurant on the previous night.

Tell Kiwi foodies that you're going to Nelson, New Zealand, and they'll insist that you make a reservation at the Boat Shed Cafe. The cozy, white building perched over the water is a city landmark: The apartment we rented advertises its nearness to the restaurant and mentions it in the driving directions.

It doesn't look like much from the outside, but inside you find an upscale casual look. Paintings and metal sculptures deck the walls, and light wood soothes the eye as you walk to your table.

The decor mirrors the food, which is elegant but not showy. The raw, or “natural”, oysters I ordered the first night came with caviar and shoestrings of brined cucumber; Melissa's abalone-like mollusc, paua, plucked from the restaurant's own tanks, came in its shimmery shell with marinated vegetables and lemon aioli.

The Boat Shed focuses on fish, but the chef's love of New Zealand food opens other doors. I liked the dark, gamy flavor of its mutton bird wontons and the tableau of tastes paired with different breads.

Given the restaurant's focus on the best New Zealand has to offer, you won't be surprised to see many wines from the country on the two long pages of the wine list. But order by the bottle if you want a good one: The by-the-glass program limits you to just one or two local wineries.

And if you've got a full bottle, you might as well skip dessert. The Boat Shed's are big, not very inspired, and not very tasty. You've got the wine handy, so order another course of fish. Seafood this good is sweeter than any dessert.

Oliveto: Quick Review

Early in our relationship, before we discovered Jojo, Melissa and I celebrated special occasions at Oliveto, but it always seemed too expensive for the food. I know the cooks have mad charcuterie skills and the wine bottles talk to the food, but the bill never jibed with the meal.

Things have changed. Melissa and I decided to give the restaurant another chance on our fourth anniversary (having been to Jojo twice in the previous three weeks), and we were happy we did. Oliveto delivered a meal that seemed worth the money we paid, though the meal wasn't cheap. Raucous crowds on both ends of the restaurant kept it from being an intimate experience, but the food was good.

When we dine out, Melissa plays a game where she predicts what I'm going to order. Even on a large menu such as Oliveto's, she almost always wins by spotting the offal dishes and any duck or rabbit. Sure enough, I started with the trotter, a rich patty of ground-up pig's foot that the kitchen had breaded and fried. From there I moved to the Piti with pigeon livers, pancetta, and Madeira, a pasta dish with udon-esque noodles and a-tad-too-big chunks of pigeon liver. I finished the meal with a juicy, spit-roasted loin of rabbit for which the meat had been flattened, stuffed with bread and rabbit livers, rolled, and skewered on a spit.

Melissa went a lighter route. She started with a pretty spring bouquet of purple asparagus, mint, fava beans, and pecorino. She opted for a silky tagliatelle dish for her pasta, one dressed with peas and black trumpet mushrooms. She recalled our wedding day menu with a lightly smoky spit-roasted leg of lamb accompanied by a rich and creamy green garlic and potato gratin. She ended the meal with a bit of framboise sherbet.

Oliveto's food takes its cue from Italy, and so does its wine list, though you can find California and French bottles. The restaurant organizes the list by style of wine—"Crisp & Dry White Wines" and "Medium-Bodied Red Wines in New Wood" for example—and then by country. I like wine lists organized this way, because you don't have to know the details of one Dolcetto producer over another to know the style. We asked our waiter for advice on the wine, and started with a minerally half-bottle of Villa Sparina's Gavi, a Piemontese white, before switching to a full bottle of Brovia's flavorful and fruity "Vigna Villej" Dolcetto d'Alba, a Piemontese red. And of course we ended with a taste of the Cocchi Barolo Chinato.

While I felt like I got my money's worth this time around, Oliveto is a pricey outing, and Melissa and I will keep going to Jojo for our special dinners. But we don't need to be wary of Oliveto anymore.