David Kinch’s Manresa in Los Gatos in the Santa Cruz Mountains, about 60 miles south of San Francisco, joined the French Laundry and the Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley, as well as Benu and Saison in San Francisco, in California’s three-star echelon.
Manresa reopened at the beginning of this year following a six-month closure after a devastating fire destroyed much of the restaurant. At the time of the reopening Kinch said that one of the silver linings of the disaster had been that it had given him and his team the opportunity to be introspective and revisit and re-evaluate things. Following the reopening Manresa appointed former three-star Grace and Saison sous chef Mitch Lienhard as chef de cuisine and tweaked “a lot of little things” to become more efficient.
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