Jay Rayner on Manresa
When my friend Jay Rayner was in town from London to promote his new book - soon to be made into a Hollywood movie - Eating Crow, we drove down to Manresa for dinner. Jay - when he is not busy being a novelist - is an influential restaurant critic for the UK Guardian/Observer. We shared some wonderful meals together, one of which - our last year pig fest at St.John in London - ranked amongst the best meals we have ever had. Prior to this trip, he had just been in New York to do a review of Per Se. So, it was not without a slight trepidation that I took him down to Los Gatos to introduce him to David Kinch and Manresa.
Not that I wasn't confident of David's ability, only that, if anything at all went wrong, and he ended up writing a bad review of the place, it would just ruin all the fun for me. Another tough thing was that Jay had asked me not to tell Manresa that he was going to do a review, a request which, with some difficulty, I managed to comply.
So we went to Manresa, and had yet another truly wonderful meal there - I have since had two more, simply astonishing what that David is capable of. About 2/3 of the way through the meal, Jay turned to me and said "something catastrophic would have to happen for me not to write a rave review of the place".
Well, happily, nothing did, and he did, and here it is:
