America’s best chef, Thomas Keller, could do whatever he wants in the culinary world. What he decided to do is a little crazy–he started a fried chicken shack in the Napa Valley.
The chicken is some of the juiciest and most delicious I’ve ever tasted. And it’s served at informal picnic tables in a perfect casual, flower-filled redwood grove in Yountville, California.
Keller is one of the world’s most celebrated chefs. In the culinary universe, creating a restaurant with three Michelin stars is the top honor a chef can achieve–it’s akin to winning a Best Picture Oscar, or taking home a Nobel Prize.
Most three-stared chefs struggle their entire careers to create a single restaurant worthy of the honor.
Keller has two of them.
His Per Se restaurant in New York has held three stars for years, but Keller is best known for his flagship restaurant, the French Laundry in Yountville, here in the Napa Valley.
The French Laundry is an icon. But people who have tried it tell me that eating there is also a marathon (with a $900+ price tag and impossible reservations, I haven’t had the experience of personally dining there yet).
The French Laundry’s menu is an ever-changing whirlwind of 10+ courses, along with wine pairings and specials. Keller famously had to make chef Anthony Bourdain a cigar-infused custard to help him get through the multi-hour dining experience.
To balance out the extreme experience of eating at French Laundry, Keller launched two less formal restaurants in Yountville: Bouchon, serving French food, and Ad Hoc, serving traditional American fare.
Even that wasn’t casual enough for Keller, though. Wanting more people to be able to experience his food without spending thousands of dollars or waiting months, he renovated a historic shed behind Ad Hoc, opened the restaurant’s garden to the public, and launched Addendum, a seasonal chicken shack.
I stopped by with my family on Addendum’s invitation to try it out.
Bring on the Chicken
Addendum is in an absolutely beautiful spot. Tucked into a redwood grove, the restaurant is entirely open-air.
There are no reservations, and seating is at big picnic tables among the trees.
An extensive garden adds to the natural beauty of the spot.
Unlike at many places in Napa Valley, dogs are welcome.
Ordering is simple. You walk up to Addendum’s renovated historical shed, and place your order at a simple window. You then get a buzzer, linger in the garden for a bit, pick up your food at another small building, and sit down for what’s essentially a very elevated family picnic.
The menu is Addendum is deliberately simple, although it’s also expanded a bit this year.
The star of the show–and the reason to come here–is Keller’s fried chicken. Served in a paper bucket, it’s slathered in a buttermilk batter and fried perfectly.
Topped with flakes of salt, it’s some of the juiciest, best fried chicken I’ve ever tried.
We got a Large bucket. Priced at $60, it has 14 pieces of fried chicken. Yes, that sounds like a lot of chicken. But trust me, you’ll want a LOT of this chicken. And although it’s a splurge in the fried chicken world, the price point is decidedly accessible compared to the price of most dishes from a three-star chef.
I personally ate three pieces on the spot, and my kids polished off two each. The chicken is equally good served cold the next day.
Keller insists that the food at Addendum is prepared to the same high standards as the French Laundry, despite the informal setting. That attention to detail and quality shows.
In addition to the flagship chicken, Addendum has recently added some new items to the menu. Pizzas are new this year.
They’re crispy and delicious. We got a simple margarita pizza, as well as a Hot Honey Pepperoni pizza that was subtly spicy and very tasty.
My younger kids especially enjoyed munching on pizza while we enjoyed our chicken.
A Ruben sandwich–loaded with house-made ingredients–is another nice handheld option.
Keller also serves sides like coleslaw (good but not traditional), corn bread, and a buttermilk ranch sauce that’s perfect for dipping pieces of white meat.
Beverages are equally simple. This being wine country, Addendum has a carefully curated menu of wines by the glass. Draft beers are also a popular pairing with the chicken.
To finish your meal, Addendum offers several ice cream sundaes. Naturally, we tried all of them.
Each sundae is based around local Straus creamery vanilla soft serve. But Keller has customized them with unique additions–a smores flavor has a toasted marshmallow swirl and graham crackers, one is laden with housemade Oreo-like cookies, and a third has strawberry coulis and pieces of pound cake.
The ice creams highlight Keller’s creativity as a chef. Lots of places locally serve Straus soft serve. Few personalize it to this level, transforming a Bay Area staple into something special and unique to the spot.
An American Approach
Although the informal ambiance is one of Addendum’s biggest appeals, it can create some challenges. The lack of reservations means that on busy days, you might need to wait to score a picnic table after ordering your food–and once you’re eating, you might have other guests lingering and waiting for you to finish!
Making good fried chicken is also labor intensive, and not something that can done last minute. For that reason, Addendum can sell out of chicken when there’s a big crowd. Arrive early to make sure there’s plenty for your group.
Those caveats are a small price to pay for the chance to enjoy some of California’s best fried chicken. And with the Napa Valley setting, Addendum makes a perfect picnic stop on a broader tour of wine country.
In our case, we filled on chicken and pizza before heading to V Sattui in St Helena for a wine and fancy grape juice tasting. There are fourteen tasting rooms right in Yountville, too, if you want to make a day of it. The nearby Veteran’s Memorial Park is a great place to run around and burn off that chicken.
Overall, Addendum feels like a perfectly American approach to fine dining. It’s hard to imagine the snooty French chefs more traditionally associated with three-starred restaurants being willing to open something as pedestrian as a chicken shack.
As the first American ever to win three stars, it seems only fitting that Keller would take such an American approach, and with some an iconically American dish, eschewing the chance to start another fancy spot, and instead opening up his food–fried crisp and eaten outdoors with family–to all comers.
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