Offering a single family-style menu on every night that it is open, Ad Hoc suits a birthday dinner. The four-course menu -- a salad, an entree, a cheese, and a dessert -- is announced via email every morning. Unless you have a dietary aversion to something, you eat what is offered. The relative inflexibility of a meal at Ad Hoc evokes the inevitable march of birthdays. You don't get to choose how fast you get older; you just age. If you make a reservation three months in advance, and you find out veal will be served, and you happen not to like veal, you either stay home or give veal another chance.

Downtown Yountville didn't impress me much. As we rolled through, the buildings seemed silly and new, as if part of a set. Even signs pointing out places of note rubbed me the wrong way. They were narrow wooden rectangles, the names printed or carved on in quirky fonts, reminiscent of signage at campsites and in tourist-heavy Gold Rush towns. As we crossed Washington St., ambling towards the restaurant, a middle-aged man in a two-tone North Face jacket -- literally, a city slicker -- walked past with his party. "I'm gonna retire here," he said emphatically to the woman with an arm tucked under his. I would rather chug acid rain, I thought, as a few ominous drops splashed symbolically from the sky. Yet when we stepped into Ad Hoc, all gripes vanished. Warm, hungry, we sat down at our table, and just as I flung open the brown folder containing the wine list, the opening strains of Michael Jackson's Beethoven-indebted "Will You Be There" wafted over from invisible stereo speakers like steam rolling off a roast. Despite its popcorn-spiritual lyrical heft, hearing it at that moment made me feel quite peaceful, comfortable with my impending birthday, and even more overjoyed than usual to be spending it with the person sitting across from me.

The salad and a flute of Cremant du Jura arrived before I could feel too weird about digging a song off the Free Willy soundtrack. The salad was the kind of California comfort food Californians should be proud of. Every ingredient was beautiful, presented artfully, and perfectly cooked. The beans were leprechaun-green, simultaneously snappy and slippery. There were sweet pale green apple slices, curling wafers of rose-colored radish, thicker potato coins, soft and creamy, melting flakes of salt, frisee and fried polenta cubes, crusty brown on the outside, still oozing within. It was actually exciting, a humble masterpiece. With lovely, harmonious flavors, the dish celebrated produce but without an dulling, dogmatic degree of simplicity and purity. An herb-crusted lamb sirloin followed, majestic pink hunks over pine nuts, golden raisins, buttered barley, and rainbow chard in a silver serving dish, and, after that, a raw milk "Vermont Ayr," nutty and sour, perfect with roasted almonds, pistachios, and pecans, and drizzles of orange blossom honey. The dinner ended with a light, creamy bread pudding studded with croissant chunks, chocolate chips and bits of medjool date. The evening concluded with an episode of Iron Chef back at the hotel.

In the morning, we ate a free continental breakfast at the Marie Callender's across from the inn. We drove home in a gale of rain, planning to stop at Berkeley Bowl for cheap sushi and groceries before heading into San Francisco.

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