FRIED CHICKEN AT AD HOC

Yes, I know it's been more than a month since I've blogged. But as Tom can probably tell you, I've been exceedingly busy and stressed out at work. But finally I have a day off where I can sit around and not do a whole lot (Ok, I lie, I'll probably be doing a little work later today and I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner). But while sitting on my couch with Top Chef playing in the background and my kitty curled up in a ball next to me, I decided to catch up on my blog. Actually, I'm pretty surprised that I haven't even blogged about our trip to Ad Hoc, so that just shows show long over due I am for blogging.

Ok, so a while ago Tom and I went for dinner at Ad Hoc in Yountville. But it wasn't just a regular dinner - it was the fried chicken dinner at Ad Hoc. For those of you who aren't familiar, Ad Hoc is a Thomas Keller restaurant with a bit of a twist - they only serve one prix fixe menu every night. It's 4 courses for $48, and you can't choose what you get, and they don't repeat the exact same menu. The good thing is that at least once a week, on alternating Wednesdays and Mondays, they always do a fried chicken night. So it's pretty easy to predict which day fried chicken night happens.

So before we even headed over to Ad Hoc, we dropped by the Oxbow Market for some snacks and provisions. The reason we were up in Napa was not just to have dinner at Ad Hoc, I also wanted to see some grapes on the vines during harvest.

At Oxbow we visited the Fatted Calf Charcuterie where Tom picked up a ton of stuff including some thinly sliced lardo, duck rillettes and smoked turkey.

After our snack, we drove over to Chandon in the hopes of seeing some grapes on the vines, but it turned out we were too late - most of them had already been harvested. A bit disappointed, we headed over to Yountville for dinner. Since we were still early for dinner, we walked around the town, and finally spotted some actual grapes on the vine.

And so I was finally ready for dinner at Ad Hoc.

The dining room at Ad Hoc isn't very big, but it is very Californian, with this casual, modern look, and lots of brown leather. We were having an early dinner (the only reservation I could get was at 5:30), so the dining room wasn't full when we arrived.

After ordering some drinks, we were served our first course - a salad of haricot vert.

Oh, I forgot to mention that no only does Ad Hoc serve only one menu, but they also serve everything family style. Man, looking at the photo of this salad just makes me hungry. It was really perfectly done. They were so generous with the the green beans, but what made it really awesome were the pickled red onions. The only thing we didn't like were the black olives served on top of the salad, which were way overpowering.

Next up was the main course - the fried chicken. It was also served with two sides- brussel spouts and roasted potatoes cooked with bacon.
Tom's favorite dish of the entire night ended up being the potatoes cooked with bacon. The chicken was served in a really generous portion (we actually ended up taking some of it home) and what I liked about it was the little hint of rosemary. The batter was much lighter than the fried chicken that I make, and what can I say, how can you really beat freshly fried, prefectly cooked chicken?

Our third course was the cheese course - the Mt. Tam from Cowgirl Creamery.
Now, I'm not normally into soft cheeses, but this was really awesome. It was served with warm, butter toast and a side of fig jam. So when you spread the cheese on the toast, it just melted and adding the fig jam on top added this lovely sweet note. Surprisingly enough, I really enjoyed it.

And the last coure was dessert - for me my least favorite course for dinner. Acutally I don't find any of the Ad Hoc desserts really inspiring (I get the email menu every day). They really go for simple desserts that can be easily assembled. In this case we had red wine poached pears with whipped cream and shortbread cookies on the side. But it was decent enough and I certainly ate my share.

Overall, we had a really lovely meal at Ad Hoc. And sitting there at dinner, looking out at this beautiful sunny day as the sunset over the valley, it was really hard not to think that we were truly lucky to be living and eating in the Bay Area.