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While I do believe in the transcendent quality of wonderful wines meticulously paired with perfect food, I think it's bunk. I really believe with all my heart that the moment of enlightenment and Buddha-like nirvana can occur with a ridiculous bottle of 75-year old port and chocolate just as much as it can occur with a warm chocolate chip cookie or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk. Or, in the case of one particularly fabulous film, a dish of ratatouille that transports you to the days in your mother's kitchen.
All that food really needs to be good is for it to be honest and create, in your mouth and on your palette, an clean and true flavor that feels real in your reality. I believe that the best cooks (home or professional) are the ones that understand the beauty of their ingredients and let them come together and sing for the eater. It's really more of an effort in cohesion and collectivity that the flavors and ingredients combine to make each other more honest -- in many ways, I guess a good cook is a marriage therapist for different foods asking the questions: how can you fit together? how can you keep each other honest? how can you support and sustain each other? do you believe in a future together?
It's my belief in these characteristics are the very essence of spectacular food at least... for me. So it's really not surprising that Thomas Keller's food philosophy melds well with my own and that I would think his food is so wonderful. My experience at French Laundry was amazing, I was drunk on fat and food because the foie that day was the best of my life. So was the panna cotta. And the wagyu steak. And the chocolate covered macadamia nuts. The salmon cornets. I could go on for quite a while, but you get the point.
I never thought this could get topped in my life, except possibly at Fat Duck or El Bulli but I wasn't sure it'd ever happen for me again.
And then I found ad hoc.
