Inside the Front of the House: Secrets of Manresa’s Michelin-Star Service
On an evening in June, I was midway through dinner at the three-Michelin-starred Los Gatos restaurant, Manresa, and I was having a moment. The dish in question was called Into the Vegetable Garden. Conceived by Manresa's executive chef and proprietor, David Kinch, it resembled a polychromatic sculpture in miniature. The course is a standard on the menu, and on any given night consists of 35 to 40 different diminutive leafy greens, punctuated by the vibrant hues of tiny flowers. Among the greens, there were some fava beans, and shaved kohlrabi as well, but what really got me were the fermented spruce tips, whose taste took me straightaway to the depths of a pine forest—cool and primordial and somehow Nordic. Meanwhile,...