Manzanilla
Crispy Bread and Salted Butter, Complimentary Peppers
Tomato Tartare
Crispy Squid Ink Fritters
Artichoke – Slow poached Egg, Glazed Baby Artichokes, Iberico Pork Lardo
Spanish Vanilla Rice Pudding – Creamy Rice, Raspberry Cotton Candy, Dehydrated Raspberries, Crunchy Caramel
From Dani Garcia comes Manzanilla – a restaurant where the bait n’ switch menu is complimented by servers who can neither describe nor pronounce a number of the haute Spanish tapas offerings that may (or may not) be available that day. Swank, sophisticated, and ‘buzzy’ during my visit I’d entered the Michelin Starred Garcia’s restaurant largely for two items – the famous squid ink fritters and an interesting foie gras preparation – only to find neither on the menu handed to me, despite being on both the online menu and the sample at the front of the restaurant. With editors from Vogue to my left ordering a nice bottle of champagne and the ladies that lunch to my right being gushed over by staff I guess I was lucky that the fritters (apparently designated a dinner item only at that time) could be prepared, but routinely ignored even with regards to my water glass and a ‘kitchen error’ leading to my artichoke dish being delivered after a pronounced delay that required me flagging down a manager, I cannot say service was good…not even close. With regard to that which was served, the squid ink fritters were indeed excellent – a creamy burst of the sea in a lightly fried shell – and dessert was innovative and quite delicious while the tomato tartare was refreshingly bright and simple. Less impressive – the overly salted and mushy artichoke dish, plus the complimentary grilled peppers which were even more overcooked than the artichokes…a ‘gift’ from the chef based on the thirty minutes I waited for the artichokes.
