By now you might have seen Christine's account of the first two stops of the Thomas Keller Marathon, a veritable epic journey of gastronomic proportion. Our third stop was supposed to be the highly regarded Ad Hoc restaurant, a comfort food joint in Yountville that Keller originally had wanted to be a temporary restaurant. It's still around because of its popularity, and it was enough of a draw for me to convince Christine to come all the way to Yountville.
You see, up until this point Christine was under the impression that I was taking her to a Thomas Keller restaurant that both of us hadn't been to. The modest 3-course meal for $49 dollars seemed within reach.
We had driven all the way here to arrive a little early so we stopped by Bouchon Bakery to ogle at the beautiful pastries. We waited a bit before our 12:15PM reservation before I pulled over nearby an old cottage looking building with a stone foundation.
Christine said, "why aren't we at Ad Hoc? Isn't that on the other side of town?" This was when I showed her my Blackberry, and instructed her to scroll down. She did...and came upon one that was titled, "Your confirmation for The French Laundry..."
Her first words were not the cleanest things she'd ever said, but let's put it at both amazement, wonder, doubt, and disgust (almost) rolled into one! She could not believe it. We had passed by that stone building, but Christine didn't know that it was one of the best restaurants in the entire world.
Let me quickly segue to a short story about our history with this restaurant. Both of us intimately know The French Laundry. On one of our first dates, we stopped by a used book store in Eagle Rock and spotted a used copy of The French Laundry Cookbook for just $20! Well, she grabbed it first and I exclaimed how cheap it was! We'd both eyed this amazing cookbook many times, but neither of us owned it. Instead of just letting her buy the book, I challenged her to a rock-paper-scissor duel, where the winner would get to buy the book. We said, "kai bye bo!" (korean words said during this game) and she won! Well she bought it all right, and we spent the better part of the early months in our relationship staring at the amazing photos and studying the recipes.
Flash forward back to Yountville, where Christine and I now stood, in front of a humble blue door that beckons one into the restaurant. At this point it hit Christine. We were in front of the restaurant of our dreams, the one place where were knew that not only some of the most superb food in the country was being made, but the place that we had only read about in blogs, newspapers, and that beloved cookbook.
We were cordially seated on a side table on the first floor, with the curtains pulled and a dim setting placed midday to resemble an evening meal. The staff glided around the room like seraphim while a coterie of diners silently awaited the first few courses of their meals.
First thing that we tasted: a warm gourgeres filled with gooey gruyere, easily one of the best I'd had. It's so luscious that it disintegrated on the palate, with the unctuous cheese awakened the palate for the amazing cuisine to come.
But we both knew the real starter for the meal, the celebrated salmon cornets, which Keller conceived having a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cone in LA's Chinatown. The cute little cones come on a special silver-slotted platter and are easily the most scrumptious looking bite I have ever seen, with a slender strip of chive garnishing the top.
The fish is actually a tad fishy, exuding a smokey hint while dissipating quickly in a silky finish, but the real surprise is the burst of creme fraiche hiding underneath it. The crunch of the cornet along with the salmon and creme fraiche really felt like that final bite of ice cream at the bottom of the cone where that last taste of ice cream and cone come together in perfect proportion. Amazing.
We expected the perhaps even more famous "Oysters and Pearls" dish next though we later learned that the dish is only served for dinner. Our consolation was something similar, if not equally revelatory. A perfect quenelle of california sturgeon caviar on a smooth, velvety layer of cauliflower panna cotta with a glaze of island creek oyster. It wasn't the famous dish, but Christine still nibbled on the delicious caviar with the small mother-of-pearl spoon for what seemed like 20 mionutes. Only a sublime beauty could get away with doing that.
First bread course was this viennese brioche, a fancy more buttery version of the French bakery classic. The bread was a little thicker than normal, and a little crumblier, giving off an incredibly fresh-baked aroma. Alongside it came two butters, one locally raised and another from Europe somewhere. Both complimented the bread courses quite nicely.
The cold course was a fresh Sacramento delta asparagus salad, most probably sous-vided to preserve the exquisite flavor and texture. It came with curlings of frisee, disks of tender carrot, and a palette streak of sauce gribiche, which was recently featured in a recent Orangette post. The rich sauce resembled a yolky mayonnaise and paried perfectly with the asparagus. Who says vegetables can't be delicious?
We had to get the foie gras, since Christine and I both love it, and this special preparation where the cooks carefully pull out any veins and blanch the foie in stock after rolling it in a cheesecloth to create a symetric roll for this dish. The foie gras torchon came sided with marcona almonds, celery branch, watercress, and a vanilla, riesling, and peach puree to offset the rich liver. What separated this preparation from others was that it was cold, unseared, and more easily adept on the palate, where the butter-like texture melted quietly into palate nirvana.
Various salts including sel gris or gray salt, jurassic salt, and I believe another sea salt, possibly fleur de sel, but my memory eludes me.
Along with the foie gras was a freshly toasted and buttered slice of traditional egg brioche.
Might as well hit all the bread courses before hitting the main courses. The loaves, which are freshly baked at Bouchon Bakery, included sourdough, whole wheat, ciabatta, and mini-baguette. They're all so cute and scrumptious, but you have to be careful not to eat too many of them!
The first fish course was a sauteed pave, or chunk of Japanese bluefin tuna with a "tuile" of crispy applewood smoked bacon, san marzano tomato compote, garden lettuce (from the restaurant's own garden), and hass avocado puree. An astoundingly simple dish where the rich tuna and the perfect sear melded ideally with the fresh, tart, and bitter counterpoints of the accoutrements. The puree bound the flavors in a rich, creamy sauce.
Christine's fish course was a carpaccio of atlantic fluke, molded into a thin tile in geometric form and artfully composed on the canvas like the current culinary zeitgeist of modern plating. I'm certain tweezers were involved, but the end result was nothing short of breathtaking for the visual enthusiast. The flavors were clean, varying in the texture of the fish, thinly sliced radish and cucumbers.
I've read a bit about these butter-poached maine lobsters and how Keller prefers to use the claws for their distinctly smooth texture. A scallop spaetzle, beets, apple, mustard and dill were the side items but the lobster were too amazing, overshadowing the rest of the dish.
The meat course was a perfectly roasted and seasoned leg of lamb from black trumpet mushroom, fava beans, carrots and paloise reduction, similar to a bearaise but with mint instead of tarragon. This version eschewed butter but used the fresh mint flavor to brighten the dish.
You can't help but think how cute this dish is, with the minute little bones sticking out of the tender flesh. This milk-fed pourlarde, or fattened hen, came embedded upon a melange of sunchokes, ramps, pinenuts with a black truffle coulis sauce.
The cheese course was a pastey sliver of aged goat cheese called cavatina, which was locally grown in Northern California. Christine didn't care too much for this since she's generally averse to goat cheese, but I thought everything except the texture was good. The sour cherries, fennel bulb tapanade, pistachios, and arugula. I probably would've wanted a little more variety in a cheese course but I guess they only go solo at The French Laundry.
First dessert was a refreshing yogurt sherbet. Think Pinkberry but fantastically rich in comparison, smooth, tangy, and delicious instead of grainy textured and too sweet. The only difficult was trying to break through the rather tough oatmeal "sable" (cookie-like thing). A nub of royal bleinheim apricot gave it the necessary fruit foil.
She is stunningly gorgeous, both elegant and whistful. She's my companion on this epicurean journey, and easily the most pleasant thing to look at in the room. Lucky me. Espresso course - the shot was pulled way too long.
I first saw a buddha's hand citron at Monterey Market in Berkeley. The gangly looking fruit really does resembled a mangled hand, but the flavors are what entices you, not appearance. This dish featured the citrus in various forms: a light "snow", flecks of the acid in the custard form, a crisp biscotti tuile.
I happen to love chocolate, and this tableau of sorts, a playfield of chocolate-flavored items was a marvel to me. Rings of carmelized banana came along various chocolate pieces and a hazelnet sorbet. I'm almost thankful Christine was so full at this point of the meal, so that I could indulge a bit more.
The mignardises or petits fours came in a clever contraption like a child's toy, where the silver canister opened up to reveal three levels of delicious ending sweets. I won't bother naming all of them, but feast with your eyes. We also had a small bowl of chocolate covered macadamia nuts, which had a lovely crunchy exterior.
We politely asked to tour the kitchen and we were awarded the opportunity. It's actually much smaller than I imagined, packing in two dozen people in tight quarters. They said that previously the Salon area, or foyer, used to house to kitchen, which was even a fraction of this one. All the appointments were clean and outlined in bright metal. Skylights lit the room while a live feed from Per Se allowed the staff to be interconnected. The well-known "finesse" sign is shown above, asserting the kitchen's commitment to excellence and that special sliver of effort that separates this restaurant from so many.
After our meal, we walked out in a bliss, trying to mentally digest the staggering meal - a meal not so much grandiose, but more like a convicting song or an extraordinary poem. There's much for the mind to chew as well as the palate, where flavors and approaches and textures blend into a superb experience that lingers much like a vintage-year wine or a super-aged cheese. Though this photo was taken before the meal, Christine's sentiment was not too different in its satisfaction.
The French Laundry
6640 Washington Street
Yountville, CA
Note: I was fortuitous enough to land a reservation with just a few days notice, but it is recommended that reservations be made up to two months in advance of the requested dining date. They do lunch and dinner service. If you're going for lunch and you intend to wield your camera, make sure to get a table on the second floor, where a flood of ambiance light will assist you in your endeavors. Also, beware that corkage is $50 a bottle and cannot be listed on the wine list. Jackets and dress shoes are required for men.
