home > dining > usa > california > los_gatos

Manresa – Rob & Ilene Adler have joined us for dinner at this highly-reputed restaurant, which is tucked away in the impossibly cute hamlet of Los Gatos. Inside it’s highly-designed, but in a way that surrounds the diner with comfort rather than the oppression of capital-A Architecture...which is helped by a somewhat muted alternative to the usual restaurant din. Patrons are a mix of suit & tie-wearing business types and casual, jeans and untucked shirt noshers; we’re in the former group, but the flawless service handles both with aplomb.

Any wine list that features an entire page of aged German rieslings is a winner in my book, but the excellence (and well-aged wine on offer, at entirely decent prices) hardly stops there. The food is precise and restrained, showing off both the extreme quality of the ingredients and a deft hand for original yet comforting interpretations. Nothing is out of place or off-kilter. This is a very nearly perfect restaurant, and that’s not something one gets to experience every day. (11/05)