"Three-star restaurant dining is transitioning really hard” – Kinch Walks Away from Manresa

After 20 years, chef David Kinch is to walk away from three-Michelin-star restaurant Manresa in California.

The Bay Area restaurant has for over two decades been the creative outlet for one of the US’s most talented chefs. Now, with the industry creaking under the strains of supply chain issues, rising costs and staff shortages, Kinch is throwing in the towel on the restaurant.

“I have other things I want to do,” he says. “I don’t want to be part of a slow decline."

The future of the restaurant in Los Gatos, Silicon Valley, is very much in the air, and Kinch, who owns the building, will look for offers for the business.

Since opening 20 years ago, Manresa restaurant has consistently served a cuisine of low-key luxury, informed by Kinch’s knowledge of local ingredients and international cuisine. The restaurant earned its third Michelin star in 2016.

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Rethinking fine dining after the pandemic

However, the type of dishes that Manresa is famous for are labour-intensive and require significant resources to serve. Since the pandemic the restaurant has been serving 40 guests per night, down from 55; currently, 16 people are working as servers or in other front-of-the-house positions, with 13 in the kitchen. Current economic conditions mean that the dining room full of waitstaff may be a thing of the past.

“Three-star restaurant dining is transitioning really hard,” said Kinch. “Chefs who were used to having armies of people have had to rethink their operating manual.”

Kinch believes that the three-star category will move in the direction of the chef’s counter, where guests interact directly with the cooks, with much higher prices, citing Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare in New York, where the tasting menu is $430, not including tax.

“It’s a generational change,” he says.

The result is that fine dining will, at least in the medium term, become more expensive and more exclusive. According to the chef, we will see an unravelling of all the work to bring fine dining to the masses over the last couple of decades, and a return to 1980s exclusivity.

“As the wage gap continues to increase, all this democratization that’s gone on in last 20 years” will be gone, said Kinch.

Kinch will walk away from his flagship restaurant, but for his other establishments – The Bywater, Mentone and his bakery Manresa Bread – it's business as usual. For the rest of Manresa’s time, the kitchen team will serve a menu with a mix of old and new dishes.

“It won’t be a museum-type menu of the last 20 years,” he said. “It will include newer concepts and ideas. As we always have.”