Manresa, 320 Village Lane, Los Gatos, California (001 408 354 4330). Meal for two, with wine and service, £120 (and upwards)
As the last course of our meal at Manresa arrived, the chef approached our table. 'Did I win?' David Kinch said to my companion Pim, who is a regular at the restaurant. Rarely before have I seen dinner as a contact sport. I have always considered myself better suited for sitting at tables than challenging anybody at, well, anything. But in this instance, with the 26th course of the night on the table before us - a rich frothy cup of hot chocolate - the language of war seemed oddly appropriate. At times it had indeed felt like we were locked in mortal combat with the kitchen.
A short explanation: I had not asked for 26 courses. I'm not beyond doing that, but I am savvy enough not to admit to it here. Gosh, you might think me a glutton. All I had wanted to do was find out what was happening at the top end of the American restaurant scene. From this side of the Atlantic it's easy to imagine that Thomas Keller of the French Laundry and Per Se, where I ate a mere 15 courses recently, is the only game in town. My friend Pim had recommended Manresa in Los Gatos, a wealthy Silicon Valley town an hour's drive south of her adopted home in San Francisco. She said that she would organise a tasting menu. As Pim knows not only her onions, but the entire allium family (she is regarded by her many friends as one of the best Thai cooks outside her native Thailand), it seemed a good bet.
And it was. Twenty-six courses of anything may be ludicrous, but Manresa is not. It has the kind of relaxed, vaguely funky air that only upscale American outfits manage, which is communicated both in the decor - desert-yellows, white walls, wood beams - and in the cheery service. On the walls, Kinch has hung menus from some of the great European restaurants where he has eaten or worked, like Arpege and the Cote d'Or. This could be a hideously self-conscious declaration of intent were it not that the walls in question belong to the toilets.
It's the sort of place that's long on buzzy chatter and short on flummery or posing, and this approach comes through on the plate. Kinch places the emphasis on the ingredients, and while there was an element of miniaturism in what we ate - large dishes writ small - a lot of the time it was simply a preparation. Thankfully, there was also whimsy, for there is nothing better calculated to ruin a five-hour stint at the table than the kind of fussy atmosphere better suited to the interment of a bishop.
So dinner began with petits fours: a savoury madeleine flavoured with black olive alongside a red pepper jelly. There was also a dish of fish and chips - a dinky cube of the softest black cod in the crispest batter, with nutty fries, somehow fashioned from chickpeas plus another of a savoury creme caramel flavoured with foie gras, which was such a good idea I don't know why I haven't tried it somewhere else before. There was a crisp croquette with a liquid centre of truffle and chestnut, served on top of a dice of sauteed chanterelle and a strand of churros, the deep-fried dough, which in Spain comes sugared and here came flavoured with Parmesan.
Some dishes were less cooked than plated: in a bowl, a quenelle of sweet scallop tartare alongside another of caviar. By themselves they were pleasant. A bite of each together was sublime, each lending the other that element of the sea they were missing. I loved the sliver of raw bass scattered with sesame seeds and the chunk of crisp, seared bream on a bed of brilliant, oily orange roe. And then there was the glossy, luscious sea-urchin sabayon which, involuntarily, made me pull the sort of expression only my wife ever gets to see.
Kinch also makes a virtue of long cooking. His lamb had been braised for 36 hours, until it became but deep, dark unctuous strands on the plate, whose earthy flavours he pointed up with a spoonful of a sweet garlic puree. But the killer was the disc of abalone with what was described as 'veal cheek and pork jowls'. Can I call this a cheeky dish or would you punch me?
This, the ultimate surf and turf, was the one that pushed us over the edge; which made us want to shout: 'Here and no further!' Though we did go further, through two different sorbets of grape, and a tiny chocolate brownie and jellies of jasmine tea and orange.
Too much, obviously, but I am here to serve and saw all this as my duty. Is it expensive? Yes and no. This, the chef's special tasting, was charged at $110. At current exchange rates that's around £65, which is a large slab of anybody's cash but still just £2.50 a course. But there are cheaper options. Three courses cost $58 (£33), rising to five courses for $78 (£44), though you will get many more dishes along the way, as the kitchen sends out its parade of canapes and pre-dessert. (The wine pairings are not, perhaps, the best value, though there are well-priced bottles on the list.)
Most remarkably, Pim has eaten tasting menus here before and has been given repeat dishes very rarely. It is extremely confident, serious cooking, drawing from but not beholden to the culinary traditions of Europe, as so much else is in the States. So when the chef came forward at the end of the night to ask us if he had won, there really was only one answer: Yes, Mr Kinch, and in so very many ways.
