Top image: The California Avenue Caltrain station, at the foot of the Palo Alto business district where Protégé sits. Photo: Constantine Kulikovsky / CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The Reported Table is the South Bay Chronicle’s new restaurant column. Each installment examines one restaurant through what can be checked: its current menus and prices, the people behind it, what other critics have published, and the public record. We do not award stars, and our reporters do not claim tastings.
Few restaurants on the Midpeninsula have held their standing as long as Protégé, the New American restaurant at 250 California Ave. in Palo Alto. It opened in March 2018, Palo Alto Online reported at the time, and earned a Michelin star that November, roughly nine months later, according to the same outlet. In the 2026 California guide, Protégé is again listed with one star, according to Michelin’s website.
What the menu says
Protégé runs two rooms. The lounge serves an à la carte menu around a 10-seat bar; the dining room serves a seven-course tasting menu, according to the restaurant. The menus quoted here are the versions posted on the restaurant’s website as of Oct. 24.
The current dining room menu opens with Protégé reserve caviar over bluefin tuna, toasted rice and pickled mango, then moves through California white seabass with uni-saffron butter, the kitchen’s nine-layer lasagna with porcini marmalade and Burgundy truffle, a Wolfe Ranch quail roulade with sticky rice and pluots, A5 Japanese wagyu ribeye with a chickpea crêpe and smoked eggplant, a cheese cart and a dark chocolate-marshmallow gâteau. On Tock, the restaurant’s reservation page lists the tasting menu at $275 per person, prepaid, plus an 8% health-benefits surcharge and a 22% service charge.
The lounge menu is where the prices come down. Shigoku oysters are $7 apiece and milk bread with cultured butter is $10. Appetizers run from $26 for an autumn brassica chopped salad to $42 for the same nine-layer lasagna. Entrées range from a $37 Moroccan-spiced vegetable pastilla and a $39 brick chicken with saffron rice and chorizo to a $54 California sablefish with mole amarillo; a Miyazaki A5 wagyu ribeye tops the list at $165. House cocktails are $21 to $24. Lounge reservations carry a $100-per-person deposit, according to Tock. The lounge menu says the 8% surcharge funds staff health benefits and that diners may ask to have it removed.
Who’s behind it
Protégé is the partnership of chef Anthony Secviar and Master Sommelier Dennis Kelly. Michelin notes that both worked at The French Laundry, and the restaurant describes its aim as bringing fine-dining attention to detail “to a casual setting.” The restaurant does not take phone calls; reservations are made online and released 30 days ahead, according to its Tock page.
What the critics have said
Michelin’s inspectors describe “thoughtful, well-balanced cuisine that shows refinement without being precious” in “a sleek modern space” that is “far from stuffy,” and single out the lounge’s dessert trolley, according to the guide’s entry.
Longtime Bay Area food writer Carolyn Jung, who publishes as Food Gal, wrote in June 2024 that the tasting menu delivered “an air of precision” with “a touch of whimsy,” and called the experience upscale but unpretentious. At the time she reported a $225 price with an automatic 20% gratuity; the menu has since moved to the $275 figure and the surcharge structure listed above.
The record
Protégé’s Tock page lists a Michelin star in every guide from 2019 through 2025, and the restaurant kept it again in June 2026. Santa Clara County posts restaurant inspection results on its SCC DineOut portal; the portal’s search was unavailable when the Chronicle checked on Oct. 24, and we will add Protégé’s most recent placard to this column once it can be confirmed. Protégé does not appear on the county’s list of closure actions for the past six months, which the portal did display that day.
The long view
Protégé’s standing is part of a steady pattern at the top of the Peninsula’s dining scene. At Michelin’s California ceremony in June, all five Peninsula restaurants with a star kept it: Protégé, Plumed Horse, Selby’s, The Village Pub and Wakuriya, Palo Alto Online reported. The churn came one tier down. Six Peninsula restaurants left the guide entirely, including the Bib Gourmand picks Orchard City Kitchen in Campbell and The Bywater in Los Gatos. The starred restaurants that have lasted mostly follow the model Protégé uses: a tasting-menu dining room that builds the reputation, alongside a cheaper bar or lounge that brings diners back on ordinary weeknights. With tasting menus nearing $300 before fees, the lounge at 250 California Ave. may matter as much to Protégé’s next decade as the star does.
The Reported Table is built from published menus, public records and other critics’ published reviews. The Chronicle does not award stars and our reporters do not claim tastings. Restaurants may send corrections to editor@southbaychronicle.com.
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