“Gimme a Vodka martini. Chopin. I like ‘em extra dry.”
“Would you like vermouth?”
“No way. Hate the stuff.”
That was me not too long ago, I thought, listening to the exchange between the bartender and the boisterous guy sitting at the other end of the bar at Redd, chef Richard Reddington’s signature restaurant in Napa Valley’s Yountville. Boisterous Guy looked a lot like Mario Batali, with a beard and ponytail. He wore khaki shorts, a loud purple polo, and had a voice to match. “How’s the Nee-wah?” Boisterous Guy asked, in reference to the Ketel One vodka, sake, lemon juice, and cucumber concoction on Redd’s cocktail menu. “Really good,” the bartender replied. “In fact, I just made one with Hendricks gin and it was pretty good.” Guess who ordered that.
It wasn’t until I heard the word “Bouchon,” the name of chef Thomas Keller’s French bistro in Yountville, a couple times that I started eavesdropping on Boisterous Guy’s conversation. He went on and on, Keller this, Keller that, finally saying, “You know, I heard on the opening night of Per Se, Keller was so frazzled he couldn’t even find his shoes!” I had to interject.
“You’ve read Michael Ruhlman, haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” Boisterous Guy answered, clearly caught off guard.
“I read that book, too.”
The Keller / clog incident is from Ruhlman’s The Reach of a Chef.
Pockets wondered aloud, “I wonder how often Thomas Keller is talked about in restaurants he doesn’t own.” Keller seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue, in Napa Valley especially, and for good reason. The chef has built an empire in Yountville. From his flagship restaurant, The French Laundry (often considered the best restaurant in the United States), to Bouchon, the Bouchon bakery, to the experimental Ad Hoc, to rumors of an upcoming burger-and-wine joint, Keller dominates the small Napa town with a cast-iron fist. His influence reaches far outside the Napa region (Keller also has a Bouchon in Las Vegas and the aforementioned Per Se in New York) and his buzz is more of a boom throughout the culinary world. I won’t lie and pretend I’m above it. I, too, have long been fascinated by Keller, eager to experience his restaurants. So, for my birthday weekend, I made a reservation at Bouchon and ventured out to Yountville.
I can sum Bouchon up in one word: crowded. The entrance is crowded. The bar is crowded. The dining room is crowded. Everything is crowded. And it’s loud. Luckily, the service is good and the bartenders are knowledgeable. Bouchon is the first place I’ve been to since starting this whole “Bartender Renaissance” where the bartenders know how to make an Americano Highball.
Chef Jeffrey Cerciello has done a great job with the food. Although the Pommes Frites didn’t live up to the hype and the Boudin Blanc (a white sausage and potato puree dish) seemed a little too plain (blame my ignorance of French bistro cuisine), everything else was excellent. The Rillettes aux Deux Saumons – fresh and smoked salmon sealed under a layer of clarified butter (which you remove) and spread over toasted bread was extraordinary. The oysters were wonderful; the desserts were mesmerizing (if you see the Pots de Crème Mint on the “specials” board you have to order it). I wish I could have tried some of the cheeses (served with honey comb) or the Terrine de Foie Gras de Canard however; my stomach didn’t have anymore room. In the end, my feelings about Bouchon were mixed. Part of me enjoyed it for what it is – a French bistro – part of me couldn’t get past the crowded, rushed, extremely loud atmosphere. For my first Thomas Keller restaurant experience it seemed a bit…lacking.
Walking around the streets of Yountville before dinner at Bouchon, Pockets noticed a small, unassuming restaurant called Ad Hoc. The name stuck with her. The next day she looked it up on the internet and found out it was a Keller restaurant. We made a reservation. After the Bouchon experience, I wasn’t expecting much out of Ad Hoc. I’d come to terms with the fact Thomas Keller is just a man, his trusted chefs just the same, and, perhaps, it was unreasonable to expect an “out of this world” dining experience unless it was at his French Laundry. All of that changed with one negative review.
Pockets and I stopped by the “visitor center” on our walk to Ad Hoc and spent some time talking to a woman named Donna. We told Donna we were going to Ad Hoc for lunch and she glared at us. “It’s no good?” I asked. Donna continued to glare. “You see that there,” Donna said pointing to the Bistro Jeanty menu. “that’s an excellent restaurant.” Well, what’s wrong with Ad Hoc? “It used to be a restaurant called ‘The Diner’,” Donna continued, “and everybody loved it. Then the owners sold it off and for a while it was a wine shop. Then he bought it and turned it into that. Everybody wishes he would call it ‘The Diner’ again but, of course, he won’t do it. I’ve eaten there twice. They charge $45 dollars for fried chicken. And you never know what you’re going to get. They change the menu everyday and it’s all picked for you.”
“Wait a minute,” I interjected. “so they create a new menu daily and you don’t have any choice in what they serve you?”
“Exactly. Four courses. They decide.”
I was sold.
Walking into Ad Hoc, it feels like an experiment. Maybe because it was an experiment. Originally, Ad Hoc was only meant to be a temporary restaurant, open for six months, a place for Keller and Cerciello to recreate their childhood favorites, experimenting with recipes for use at The French Laundry. I can only assume it became so popular they decided to keep Ad Hoc open indefinitely.
The décor is rustic yet still maintains a modern flair (word has it all Keller did was repaint and add the brushed-chrome tables). Menus are kept in thick folders, almost as if in a doctor’s office. According to our waiter, aside from one new employee the staff had been comprised of the same people since day one. Coincidentally, Sunday, September 16, 2007, the day Pockets and I dined at Ad Hoc, just so happened to be the one year anniversary. It also happened to be my birthday. And Mexican Independence Day.
In honor of the one year anniversary, Ad Hoc was serving the same menu they had on opening day: an heirloom tomato salad (with tomatoes our server hand-picked from the French Laundry garden that morning) with fresh mozzarella; tri-tip served with mushrooms, corn on the cob, and roasted piquillo peppers; a cheese course of Humboldt Fog with succulent figs and fresh honey; shortcakes with strawberries and whipped vanilla bean cream. Pockets asked, “Is it wrong to think $45 is a bargain for this?” Of course, she already knew the answer: absolutely not. To accurately describe the meal, it was heavenly. I meant to ask our server, “What do you do with evil vegetarians?” but I was in too much ecstasy to be mean-spirited.
In true foodie fashion (god forgive me), I asked to see the kitchen, the first time I have ever asked to see a kitchen. Our server, who had been beyond cordial the entire time, happily led us into the back, pointing out the various stations and the ever-so-cool stock pots (which I believe were also used for Bouchon stocks). It was beautiful. Wide open, white, and immaculate. After introducing us to everyone our server pointed to a chef saying, “And here we have Thomas Keller.”
Everyone laughed.
I asked, “How many people actually come in here expecting to see Keller in the kitchen?”
“About a hundred and fifty a night.”
Ad Hoc restored my faith in chef Keller, both in his food and as the culinary-god figure he’s been portrayed as (chef Cerciello ought to get some credit too, as well as the entire staff). I’m glad Ad Hoc is permanent. It’s beyond anything I could have hoped for. I can’t wait to go back. Donna is missing out.
After our remarkable meal, Pockets and I stopped back by Redd for a “Farewell to Yountville” cocktail. That’s when I ran into the vodka swilling, Keller ranting, Boisterous Guy. After I’d caught him with the Ruhlman thing he told me, “Yeah, I just love all that back-and-forth between RULE-MEN and BORE-DAN on “No Reservations.” Like in Vegas? I loved that shit. You know BORE-DAN and his restaurant LOS HALL-ES? I heard it’s horrible! The food sucks, the service sucks; I’ve never heard a good review!”
I just nodded and laughed. Then Pockets and I toasted to one day dining at LOS HALL-ES, or even better Les Halles (pronounced Ley-All). For some reason, I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be wonderful.
—
Thomas Keller [The French Laundry] [Bouchon] [Bouchon Las Vegas] [Per Se] [Ad Hoc]
Posted: September 17th, 2007 | Author: Chris Walker | Filed under: Ad Hoc, Anthony Bourdain, Bouchon, Michael Ruhlman, Thomas Keller | No Comments »
From the first, perfect Gin Martini, to failed Vesper attempts, to the exploration of the classic Manhattan, my abandonment of the Vodka Martini has been a year-long series of hits and misses. As I pointed out yesterday, one of the final turning points was when Michael Ruhlman – author of The Reach of a Chef and House: A Memoir (among others) and Chief and Commander of the Chicken Fried Pork Belly Ceasar movement – slammed the Vodka Martini as a focal point of American mediocrity. I like Ruhlman’s writing and value his opinions (however elitist they may seem and more so because of it, perhaps) so I contacted him in an attempt to better understand his disdain for the Vodka Martini. Ruhlman, via e-mail, wrote:
“This whole issue would never have come up had it not been for the name. Vodka marketers convinced people that this flavorless hooch was better because it was flavorless (and didn’t give you as bad a hangover, yeah right), but realized they needed to give vodka on the rocks a classy name. If they’d been smart, which, being vodka advocates by profession, they weren’t, they’d have GIVEN it a name, made an actual vodka cocktail that required for its distinctive flavor that vodka be used. But, as this is impossible, as vodka has only the alcohol punch but no flavor to speak of, you can’t do it. Classic vodka cocktails, bloodies and screwdrivers, depend on vodka having no flavor. So, if they’d called had vodka vermouth and a twist or olive a, what, a Molotov or something, I would have left you vodka drinkers alone. There’s the Manhattan, and there’s the Rob Roy. Two variations of the same cocktail. No problem.”
Ruhlman continued:
“So basically my beef is not with vodka – drink what you want, I don’t care – it’s that marketers have conned America into preferring vodka (and I don’t hate vodka and sometimes drink it, when there’s nothing else left), a spirit without flavor. What I HATE is that America, unthinkingly, has glommed onto it with the same passion as they have the Chicken Caesar Salad. Some mixologist has said of the American generation of cocktail drinkers that they have been lobotomized by vodka. I think that’s wrong. I think we’ve lobotomized ourselves, we’ve stopped THINKING for ourselves and let the marketers and agribusiness lobbyists think for us. And the emblem of that to me is The Vodka Martini.”
Ruhlman’s comments made me think about the craft of drink making on a larger scale. I told him, a problem I find is bartenders tend not to know how to make a drink anymore. Uneducated in mixology, their knowledge often tops out at the “Cosmo” or “Lemon Drop.” Part of me thinks this ignorance, or lack of appreciation for the “craft of the cocktail” and the ingredients involved (not to mention the availability), is a result of American consumers so wholeheartedly embracing vodka. And I wonder if vodka hasn’t paved the way for so-called “cocktail menus” full of fruity, sugary concoctions that don’t showcase or respect alcohol’s flavors but rather mask them, making the secondary ingredients more important than the alcohol itself. How much has it damaged the culture, or craft, and appreciation of such, as a whole? You don’t see drinks being made with Bitters very often; I’d never even heard of a Negroni or Bourbon Daisy until a month ago. Finally, I asked Ruhlman, do you think bartenders have lost their role as craftsman, in America, reduced to popping tops off Bud Lights and pouring Jager shots forever? Do you think (or even hope) we can get the level of sophistication back, on a larger scale, or will it be forever reduced to the confines of places like The Velvet Tango Room? Ruhlman responded:
“You say it as well as or better than I can. Bartenders don’t know drinks because customers don’t. Maybe customers can train bartenders by knowing themselves drink basics, like what’s in a sidecar. We grow stupider and stupider and pretty soon will just have one flavor of everything until all is one generic can of food like in Repo Man. Service generally has gone downhill, part of that service is bartending. Again, we need to first acknowledge that it is a craft, like good table service, and appreciate it as such and then perhaps people will aspire to it.”
Three of the most important points from Ruhlman’s e-mail:
01. “Bartenders don’t know drinks because customers don’t.”
02. “Maybe customers can train bartenders…”
03. “Again, we need to first acknowledge that [bartending] is a craft…and appreciate it as such…”
It got me thinking: why not bring the respectability of bartending back by asking more from bartenders, more from ourselves? Instead of settling for a “Cosmo” why not try an Americano Highball? The bartender doesn’t know how to make it? Write the recipe down and give it to them. Like I said yesterday: it’s time to raise the bar. Literally. I encourage you to join me. I’m sure some will talk shit behind my back, call me snob. Whatever. Or there will be some who think I’m investing too much thought, too much effort into “evil”, “deplorable” alcohol. Are these the same people who don’t read books, listen to Fergie, and eat fast food on a regular basis? Your opinion doesn’t count.
I think too often we settle in life. Enjoying a good cocktail shouldn’t be one of those times. I’m starting a project, locally, to find the best bars in Reno, where bartenders actually know how to make drinks. However naive or overzealous it may be, I want to bring respect back to the bartender.
Posted: September 14th, 2007 | Author: Chris Walker | Filed under: Alcohol, Michael Ruhlman | No Comments »