An Ad Hoc Night Out

Ad Hoc is the latest restaurant by Thomas Keller built as a temporary placeholder until it's final guise as "Burgers and Half Bottles" is ready. The menu is prix fixe and bookings are only available for tables of 10+.

Tanya organised 14 people initially for a 10 person booking knowing, that with a group that large, people would cancel at some stage. On the day we ended up with 11 people. People from my work and their partners made up the majority but everyone was delighted that we didn't talk shop all night.

The food was delightful, utterly delicious, delectable and divine. Served family style, we had great fun serving each other and helping ourselves to seconds. The portions were generous without being ridiculous (as is common in the USA, quantity is quality in some places).

The menu changes every day, for our visit it consisted of

  • a soup to start
  • braised duck legs (braised for 10 hours!)
  • a firm cheese served with quince puree and toasted almonds
  • chocolate brownies with marshmallow icecream

someone grabbed a menu so I'll try and get a copy to add some more details.

I got stuck with selecting the wines for the whole table. I'm still not familiar with the local labels (and there are soooo many) so I decided to rely on some local knowledge. The waiter was very "helpful" with the wine selection, craftily upselling to more expensive bottles. That being said every wine he suggested was excellent.

I really wish the place wasn't 2 hours drive away. Hopefully we can make it back there again before it transmogrifies into it's new form.