If exploring the possibilities of food through a 14-course meal in the tricked-out garage of a suburban Arroyo Grande tract home doesn’t tickle your epicurean fancy, just stop reading now. If, on the other hand, you revel in food experiences where deliciousness is only the tip of the iceberg, where each dish opens your mind to the possibilities of what ingredients can be, where you uncover morsels of chemistry and windows into foreign cultures with every bite, then welcome to Six Test Kitchen, perhaps the most interesting culinary experience in California today.
Six Test Kitchen is the six-seat suburban experiment of 29-year-old Chef Ricky Odbert, who, after a decade of working in San Francisco’s top kitchens, decided to literally come home. “I grew up in this house,” he explained to me somewhere between the onion chicharrones and chicken/scallop chawanmushi courses a few weeks ago, explaining that his bedroom was behind the door. I’d joined five winemakers from the nearby Edna Valley for dinner in the garage turned commercial kitchen, where the sous vide station and stainless-steel countertops occupy the space once reserved for old records, faded pictures, and resident spiders. “I didn’t want to work for anybody,” explained Odbert. “I was just over it. I wanted to do my own thing.”
As Toto and other ’80s hits played in the background and multiple bottles of wine were uncorked (it’s BYOB), Odbert explained each meticulously plated dish, from the flash-fried tapioca chips and aerated sunchokes with roe to the toothpaste-looking chicken liver squeeze and year-old persimmon dessert, which looked more like thick salami. Over the course of three hours, we were thoroughly entertained, educated, and amazed, including those of my companions who’d already been there, some multiple times.