A restaurant of the caliber and reputation of Manresa can only be appropriately compared with its peers. That being said, while Manresa was a great (and very expensive and long – 3.5 hours) experience, it didn’t quite live up to its billing.

We had the tasting menu at Manresa: 4 amuses, 7 courses, 4 desserts. Overall, everything was very well done – David Kinch uses lots of interesting salts and sweet/savory combinations to give you unique tastes. I had a few “wow this is good” moments – the slow cooked sherry egg, salmon in its own roe, abalone – along with a few “this is weird” moments, but I appreciate the creativity of the chef. My girlfriend particularly enjoyed a Japanese snapper dish and a lamb dish. However, we were disappointed in the foie gras (felt undercooked) and the ox-tail ravioli (I’ve been spoiled by pasta). Overall though, mostly “hits” and only a few “misses.”

I had hoped we’d see some more items fresh from their garden, given the prime season for many veggies – but none were featured on a course. The ones that were accompaniments were very good, though.

While Manresa generally executed very well on all its dishes, I was not overall wowed to the extent that many others seem to have been (and perhaps I feel like I should have been). The service was good, but didn’t feel quite to the level of other top tier restaurants. Still though, if you have a special occasion and want to try some innovative cuisine, Manresa is worth a trip.

This place is TINY – there’s about 8 bar stools, 2 tables inside, and a few outside if the weather isn’t bad. That being said, if you can get a seat, the food is solid, and good value. The bar seats are especially fun because you can see the kitchen and how they’re making all you’re food :) The arugula salad with baked goat cheese was particularly good.

Good value restaurant. Serves mostly french food, but has a grilled calamari appetizer dish that has a very asian flavor to it. They also have perhaps the best Steak Frites in the city – mmm, I can still taste that delicious red wine butter sauce.

Great restaurant. The atmosphere is nice; the back dining room has a view of a garden which lights up nicely at night. In terms of appetizers – the mushroom fritters are what they are famous for and are very good – crispy on the outside and juice on the inside. The lamb shank entree was very nice as well: fall off the bone meat, with some nice and not generic accompanying flavors such as mint.

One of the cal-italian institutions in the city. The inside of the restaurant is nice, but tables are all stuck close together. The dishes are not extraordinary, but are all pretty good, especially the homemade pastas. Solid value, considering the quality of the food.

Nice little pizza shop. The space is clean and modern, but is tiny (only 7 tables or so), so expect to wait. The fresh pulled mozzarella was some of the best i’ve ever had, and the pizza crusts were thin and crisp.

Definitely the definition of extravagance. The service and atmosphere are impeccable, but the food (for its price) disappoints. We had the tasting menu, which was not particularly creative and did not have any memorable dishes. Overall good food, but there is much better food at lower prices elsewhere in the city.

I normally don’t write restaurant reviews, but I find myself unable to stop thinking about my experience last weekend at Quince.

I went last Saturday with my girlfriend for her birthday. Once we walked in, we were impressed. To start off with, the space inside quince is beautiful. Small, intimate, modern, classy, romantic. The server was a bit slow to take our order initially, but once we got going, service was impeccable and professional.

The magic truly started when the food arrived. We ordered 3 pasta dishes and one entree to share between two of us. Pasta is my first love, and I have pasta at almost every opportunity I get, so I was excited to try out pastas as Quince. Our first dish was a ravioli with six different fillings (2 kinds of cheeses, spinach, 2 kinds of beets, fava beans). The pasta itself was very delicate yet not too soft. Each of the fillings was extraordinarily flavorful yet still very light and pleasant. To top it off, there was a wonderful cheese sprinkled around the ravioli. It was by far the best ravioli I’ve ever had. My favorite was the ravioli filled with the fava bean puree – truly a statement since I generally do not like fava beans. For a restaurant to be able to turn something I don’t like into something I do is quite rare and has only happened a couple times in my life.

The next pasta dish was their gnocchi. Possibly the best gnocchi I’ve ever had (despite what you might think, I almost never use such superlatives – but Quince really deserves it) – the texture of the gnocchi was perfectly chewy, moist, and tender, yet not mushy in any way. The sauce the gnocchi was in a nice and simple (not too heavy) cream sauce which was very pleasant.

Finally, we had agnolotti stuffed with veal, chicken and rabbit. Again – the pasta was tender and extraordinarily well done. The stuffing was flavorful and complex – you could taste each of the meats, even though they were all combined together.

After my blissful experience with the three pasta dishes, the rest of the night I was deliriously happy. They could have been very average the rest of the night and still had me raving about them. Despite this, I was still very impressed by our entree – we had a tai snapper with artichoke, artichoke puree, and artichoke chips, sitting in olive oil, with fresh peas on the side. The thai snapper was very well done – crispy on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside. The peas seem as if they were fresh from the garden and very tasty, and the olive oil was a very nice compliment to the artichoke and snapper.

Finally, for dessert we had a “strawberry floating island” – strawberries in a sweet cream with a beautiful sugar-spun decoration on top. This dish shone more in its presentation and its novelty, but the strawberries were fresh and sweet.

It was also the nice little touches that really pushed this restaurant to the top of my list – from a birthday greeting printed on the menu, to three different waiters wishing my girlfriend happy birthday, to speedy, helpful service, to having my car already ready for me outside after my meal (they had told the valets we were ready to go after we paid, I’m guessing). They made a special occasion even more special.

The meal was reasonably priced for the quality – it was around $120 for the two of us.

I’ve been to Incanto, Delfina, Perbacco, etc… many of the top Italian-y restaurants in the city. This tops them all.