Ad Hoc

After a day of visiting wineries, Chris and I walked around Napa and decided to go to dinner at Ad Hoc, a Thomas Keller restaurant in Yountville. The restaurant was opened in 2006 and was actually supposed to be his dream restaurant, but ad hoc became so popular that Keller decided to open his dream restaurant in another location (his dream restaurant, if you’re interested, will serve burgers and wine). I made reservations through opentable and I was really excited to try it because the chefs at the restaurant change their menu on a daily basis (based on what’s available). Ad Hoc serves different things every night (except Monday nights – they always have fried chicken, one of the most popular dishes on their menu). Their food is served family style, there are only four dishes per night, and the portions are huge.

Ad hoc:

Rustic bread from Bouchon, yet another Thomas Keller restaurant:

On the night we went, we started with the broccolini salad, which came with cerignola olives, crimini mushrooms, red onions, fra’mani salami, and sherry vinaigrette:

The next course was rack of Colorado lamb with garden pea shoots from The French Laundry’s garden, fava beans, English peas, sweet carrots, and spring garlic risotto pangrattato:

Spring garlic risotto pangrattato:

The risotto was absolutely amazing; I’ve had a lot of risotto and I used to think I didn’t like it because I grew up eating a different type of rice, but this risotto was so f-ing DELICIOUS. The pangrattato (bread crumbs) added a great crunchiness to the smooth texture of the risotto.

For our third course, we had an amazing combination of housemade granola, pink lady apples, Marshall’s farm honey, and Wisconsin sheep dairy coop mona:

The granola and honey were my favorites (the honey tasted better than any honey I’ve ever had from a squeezable bear).

Our last course were bombalocinos (little bombs in Italian) with apricot jam, valrhona chocolate sauce, and vanilla pastry cream:

The apricot jam is made in-house and was absolutely perfect (Smuckers and other jams add too much sugar instead of relying on the fruit’s natural sugar). We couldn’t get enough of the apricot jam and just ate it out of the serving jar after we finished our bombalicinos!

The dinner at Ad Hoc was a pretty great way to start our Thomas Keller tour (and a great way to celebrate Chris’ birthday!). Next time we plan a trip to Napa, we’re going to go on a Monday so we can try Ad Hoc’s amazing fried chicken! My next post will have a ton of pictures from The French Laundry, including LOTS of jumping pictures….stay tuned!