Hot dogs, meet haute cuisine

For Stacey's birthday back in March, I gave her tickets to the Red Sox-A's game on Friday.  My cousins Rick and Steve and their wives Jessica and Kendra joined us for a night at the Oakland Coliseum, which I had been led to believe would be an easy Red Sox win.  Not so -- but we had fun anyway.

Yesterday was my birthday, so we spent the morning relaxing at a nearby spa.  For dinner, we had made reservations to eat at Manresa, one of the most talked-about restaurants in the Bay Area.  It has earned two Michelin stars and four Mobil stars, and has been included on Gourmet Magazine's list of the Top 50 Restaurants in America, Gayot's Top 40, and Restaurant Magazine's best 50 restaurants in the world for two years running.  It is also about twenty minutes from our house, in ritzy Los Gatos.  Of course, we had to try it.

The meal was one of the best we've had in years -- impeccable service, surprising flavors, and perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked dishes.  To start, we were treated to a succession of three amuse bouches: an olive-sized spring pea and garden lettuce croquette, crispy on the outside with a hot, liquid center; a Pemaquid oyster in a briny sea-water gelee; and a Manresa staple, an egg yolk poached with sea salt and chives, dressed with a sherry vinegar cream and a bit of maple syrup, and served in its own shell.  The egg was my favorite part of the meal, and easily one of the most delicious things I've eaten in years.  Salty, sweet, acidic and creamy -- I scraped the last little bits out of my shell and wished for more.

We ordered the four-course menu, which for Stacey consisted of crispy mussels perfumed with nasturtium flowers and served with vegetables and curry spices; Monterey Bay abalone with leeks, oysters, wine and walnuts; poached and roasted farm poularde with pea porridge, cepes and ramps; and spring carrot pudding cakes with fromage blanc fritters, pistachio praline, carrot sorbet and pansy flower consomme.  I had fennel bulb soup with duck confit, cranberry bread croquant and mustard cream; Atlantic hake with braised fava beans and sorrel, served in oxtail consomme; roast lamb with cauliflower cream, salted Meyer lemon, purslane and garden roots; and rhubarb granita with reine de pres (an herb, known in English as meadowsweet) ice cream, bunuelos, sweet and sour strawberries and tapioca.  I tried everything Stacey ordered and it was all delicious.  The carrot dessert was perhaps more notable for creativity than deliciousness.  It showcased how sweet carrots are, how many ways you might serve them, but ultimately wasn't what I'd want for dessert.  I did love the contrasts in my own dessert: the icy, slightly bitter granita, the sweet-sour strawberries, the rich-creamy tapioca, herbal-creamy ice cream, and light, sweet, fried bunuelos.  I also particularly loved my creamy fennel soup and the hake and oxtail consomme -- I am a sucker for oxtails.  After dinner, we were offered coffee or an exceptionally beautiful array of Chinese teas, hand-sewn into intricate shapes that unfurl just so in hot water.  The sunset oolong I chose entered my glass teapot as a dry, dusty-green ball with a pink sunburst on it, and slowly transformed into what looked like a water lily floating on the surface of a very delicate tea.  We were given handmade chocolate-armagnac truffles, and on our way out we were met by a maitre d' holding a large glass jar full of wrapped candies.  They turned out to be rich, soft, buttery housemade caramels, flecked with vanilla beans and slightly crunchy with sea salt crystals.  They put every other sea salt caramel I've ever had to shame.

The rest of the weekend promises to be low-key.  I am perfectly happy to do a little laundry, write a few emails, watch the last Ugly Betty, and be grateful for an extra day off work.  We hope you are all enjoying your Memorial Day weekends as much as we are.