On Sunday, Nicole took me to a pretty well known restaurant called Manresa (in Los Gatos) for my birthday.

It was good, but not as good as we would’ve hoped for the price and the reputation it has.

The atmosphere is super fancy, a bit too stuffy for my taste. It’s the kind of place where the waiters fawn over you and formally announce all the dishes that they bring to you with great fanfare. The kind of place where you feel like you are being watched.

We both opted for 3 course fixed price meals, but this is the kind of place where they bring you lots of extras – our first extra was some type of mango lassi, that was a bit salty to me. We also had some kind of fried cod cake with spicy sauce and an egg in the shell with maple syrup.

Nicole’s appetizer was a sweet onion soup with egg and manchego cheese, probably the best item that we had. My appetizer was “black bass on the plancha with cream of salsify, asparagus, and yellowfoot chanterelles”. The mushrooms were delicious but the fish was a bit plain.
Nicole’s main course was “milk-fed poularde, poached then roasted, bluefoot mushrooms, and toasted farro”. I didn’t even know what poularde was – the waitress explained it as an overfed chicken, sort of like foie gras applied to chicken. Nicole thought it was just OK but not excellent. My main course was “roast suckling pig with butcher’s potatoes and green garlic, sherry vingegar-honey”. My favorite part of the meal actually was the unmentioned spinach and the sauce. The pig just didn’t do it for me.

There was dessert of course too, but it was nothing to write home about. Or perhaps I should say nothing to write on my blog about.

All said it was a pretty good meal, but not one of the best that we’ve ever had.

Best meals in our lives:

• Aqua in San Francisco
• Rosemary’s in Las Vegas
• Il Latini in Florence, Italy

Do you have any favorites of your own?