When I was growing up and it was dinnertime, we answered to a higher power: Mommy. Didn't like broccoli? Wouldn't eat liver? If either was on her menu, there was no choice. She served one meal, no substitutions: a meat, a starch, a green vegetable. Attempts at negotiation were usually met with the diplomatic rejoinder “Because I said so.” I learned pretty quickly to appreciate dining out, which became my own “Because I said so.” My mother was the unwitting patron saint of “dressing on the side.” Well, live and learn - or at least try to - was my inclination last month when I scheduled dinner three nights in a row at the Napa Valley restaurant Ad Hoc. Owned by Thomas Keller of French Laundry and Per Se fame, it opened in October 2006 as the antithesis of four-star pageantry, offering one set meal a night. When I spoke to Keller recently, he said, “I used the model of home.” It turns out his mother never gave him a choice, either. Dinner at Ad Hoc, served family style, is $48 for four courses, which is a bargain. (The prix fixe menu at the French Laundry is $240 for nine courses.) The appetizer is a soup or a salad, the entree comes with two sides, and it is followed by a cheese course and dessert. The restaurant learned a hard lesson early on, said Nick Dedier, Ad Hoc's general manager, when it posted fish entrees and watched the cancellations pile up. Now entrees are beef, veal, poultry or pasta. If you don't eat meat, the restaurant will devise an alternative. You'll have to roll with it. Which means this: If you are someone who must have the sauce on the side or who spurns butter in that sauce, Ad Hoc may not be for you. If you have food allergies or aversions, staff members will try to please you. (They once improvised a gluten-free fried chicken on the spot, and they'll gladly give your child plain pasta if that's all he'll eat.) But this dining experience is an exercise in giving up control. You don't choose, they do. That's the game. And, boy, is it a far cry from liver night. “For most people, the definition of luxury is multiple choices,” Keller said. “But if I don't have to make a choice, if I'm taken care of and everything's great, to me, that's luxury.” I was willing to see how far I could bend. Ad Hoc serves dinner daily and posts the menu on its Web site at noon, Pacific time. The most popular entree is fried chicken, which has gone from being offered twice a month to weekly, on alternating Mondays and Wednesdays. I ate at the restaurant on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in early March, so I knew at least part of one night in advance. At the first dinner the appetizer was a Portuguese soup filled with greens and spiced skirt steak served with roasted potatoes and sauteed black trumpet mushrooms, red bell peppers and arugula. It was a gorgeous dish with vivid tastes, even though the meat was served medium-rare and I prefer medium. (The waiter didn't ask, and I didn't specify.) Our remaining wine accompanied the cow's milk cheese, which preceded an apple crisp. Did I sleep that night. On Tuesday there was trouble in paradise. The appetizer was asparagus with prosciutto and house-made mozzarella (to die for). The entree was veal Milanese and polenta, then three cheeses and panna cotta. A young couple mumbled miserably at their table before getting up to leave. “Sorry,” they told the bartender, politely. “We just don't like this menu.” “That happens sometimes, and that's OK,” Dedier said. “Another night, we'll knock their socks off.” Nearby, three men finished their appetizers and one of them, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings (I heard their waiter explain how the restaurant worked when they sat down), asked for a menu to choose an entree. “You mean there's only one thing?” he said, stupefied. Peer pressure prevailed, the veal arrived, and he ate it without complaint. Meanwhile, I was manfully downing the polenta, which usually gives me Cream of Wheat flashbacks. I was determined to get an A in Plays Well With Others. By the third night I had reached a state of childlike euphoria: no choices, no worries, no responsibility. The place was packed with locals who receive fried chicken alerts by e-mail. The menu was: a beet and frisee salad; the chicken, with a warm red creamer potato and haricots verts salad, and biscuits with honey butter; cheese; then banana upside down cake with Valrhona chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream. That was one happy restaurant. And I was one happy customer. Until the next morning when I had to answer to the highest power of all: my pants. - NYT __
