The fact that we actually ended up at one of Thomas Keller's restaurants was kind of by accident. We'd planned to do a little trip to Napa and Sonoma, but we'd made no bookings, done no planning, but managed to blag a table at Ad Hoc by asking our hotel concierge to book it for us. And we nearly didn't make it, as we finally looked up where it was, and it was going to be a good 50 minute drive from our hotel in Santa Rosa. I am so glad we managed to drag ourselves out.
Apparently, Ad Hoc itself is a bit of an accident, with Thomas Keller intending it to be a burger joint, and whilst they were waiting for the license for it, he set up a chilled place where they would basically cook their staff meals. Today, it is still a family-style place, with only one menu per day, no choice, and I'm pretty sure they've up the ante from their usual staff meals.
It is such a horrible cliche nowadays to say that ingredients is the secret to good cooking, but Ad Hoc is a pure celebration of the gorgeous produce of California. And they manage to just put some genius combinations together. Here was our very simple, but glorious menu:
OK, I must admit, I was disappointed to see a salad as my starter, but it turns out that they always serve a family style salad as starters at Ad Hoc, and it was probably the single best dish I ate in my whole time in SF. A little gem lettuce salad, with potentially the most amazing dressing ever:
They call the dressing 'green goddess dressing', and when I asked the waiter what was in it, he spent about 5 minutes going into the ins and outs of the recipe. Literally 5 minutes. I had to write it down to try to remember it. The ingredients involve parsley water, chives, anchovies, buttermilk, creme fraiche, aioli, lemon juice, probably some other stuff, combined in the most convoluted way. But I don't care, it was divine. I was smothering my lettuce with it. I was dunking my bread in it. I may have dunked my finger in it. And furthermore, I was impressed by the fact that the waiter knew exactly what was in that dressing. The waiting staff, on the whole, had amazing food knowledge, and you suspect they are all budding chefs biding their time by waitressing for Thomas Keller. I wish waiters in this country cared about the food as much as they did!
Onwards, the peppered beef flatiron was a little flat for me. Sorry, I will continue the battle of British vs. US steaks here:
But the veggie side with it was wonderful. I really ought to start cooking radishes:
Their cheese course was also very very amazing. Apparently the Browning Gold comes from somewhere in New York, with perfectly ripe apple, and a perfect almond brittle. My dream kind of dessert:
And unfortunately, the cheese course was so good, I wasn't really paying attention for the pudding (cocoa rib cake with raspberry sauce and hazelnut ice cream), or the very cute petit fours:
I heard that they have a band of regulars who come every week to Ad Hoc, I am so jealous. I was so enamoured by this restaurant that I have already got a copy of the cook book Ad Hoc At Home next to me on the sofa right now. It makes for a very interesting read too. Having grown up cooking in the casual style of Nigel Slater, having a cookbook written by an obsessive 'proper' chef is a real change. The first recipe is for fried chicken, simple enough, but once you read it, you realise that the whole recipe takes about 15 hours from start to finish. And there is a whole page telling you off for using tongs in the kitchen. It's one of those serious whole Sunday kind of cookbooks, which I am sort of looking forward to discovering.Oh, and did I mention? Thomas Keller was dining on the next door table. I didn't recognise him.
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