Top image: The patio at Plumed Horse on Big Basin Way in Saratoga. Photo: Mx. Granger / CC0 via Wikimedia Commons
The Reported Table is the Chronicle’s column on South Bay and Peninsula restaurants, assembled from published menus, public records and other critics’ published verdicts. This week: Plumed Horse, the Michelin-starred dining room at the top of Saratoga Village.
On a stretch of Big Basin Way better known for wine-tasting rooms and boutiques, Plumed Horse has been one of Silicon Valley’s reference points for occasion dining for most of the past two decades. The restaurant’s own account, and the Michelin Guide’s, describe a place that has built its reputation on two things a diner can verify before booking: a long-running souffle and one of the region’s deepest wine programs.
What the menu says
According to the menu posted on the restaurant’s website as of Oct. 25, the centerpiece is a Chef’s Tasting at $225 per person, with an optional wine pairing at $148 and a non-alcoholic pairing at $118.
The posted tasting opens with a round of canapés: a smoked trout chouquette, an ahi tuna “cigar,” beef tartare with green goddess, and a guava and goat cheese pastelito. From there the listed progression runs through an heirloom tomato course; a black pepper parmesan souffle served with uni and a Dungeness crab fondue; a spot prawn girella; and roast poussin. For the main course, the menu lists a roast short rib, or A5 Miyazaki striploin as an $85 supplement. Dessert is listed as a crème fraîche espuma followed by a strawberry pistachio entremet.
For diners who want a shorter evening, the site lists a four-course prix fixe at $138. Caviar service is posted at $148 per ounce, a “Souffle Royale” supplement at $35, sides at $18 and cocktails between $24 and $30. Menus at this level change with the season, and these prices are dated to the version on the website as of Oct. 25.
Who’s behind it
The kitchen is led by chef Peter Armellino. According to the restaurant’s biography of him, Armellino started cooking at 17 on Long Island, worked at Gramercy Tavern in New York, and later cooked in San Francisco at Campton Place and at Aqua, where he served as chef de cuisine, working alongside chef Laurent Manrique.
The same page credits Armellino with the restaurant’s 2008 transformation and states that Plumed Horse has earned a Michelin star every year since 2008. The name itself is far older: the Michelin Guide’s listing notes that a restaurant called Plumed Horse has occupied this location since 1952.
What the critics have said
The Michelin Guide, which kept the restaurant on its one-star list in 2026 according to Eater SF’s roundup of this year’s Bay Area stars, singles out the souffle as “considered an essential” and points to what it calls a “world-class collection of wines.” Michelin lists the dining room as open Tuesday through Sunday, 5 to 10 p.m.
The wine claim has a long paper trail. The restaurant’s press and awards page lists Wine Spectator’s Grand Award, the magazine’s top tier for restaurant wine lists, for every year from 2015 through 2024.
Closer to home, a July 8 newsletter from The Almanac by Adrienne Mitchel described Plumed Horse as “one of the more affordable fine-dining restaurants in the area,” noting a prix fixe that was $128 at the time; the current posted price is $138. Mitchel’s write-up was not uniformly glowing: she wrote that a duck dish was “missing something.”
The record
Santa Clara County’s Department of Environmental Health posts inspection results through its SCC DineOut portal. The most recent routine inspection report on file for Plumed Horse, dated March 27, 2025, records a Green placard and a score of 96, with no major violations.
The inspector recorded minor violations in two categories. Under the facility-maintenance category (K35), the report notes worn cooler door seals, a broken handle on a prep cooler with the door taped, and a leak and pitting at the three-compartment sink. Under the plumbing category (K41), it notes a container placed to catch a leak beneath the bar sink. DineOut data was listed as current through Oct. 24, 2026.
The long view
Plumed Horse sits at an interesting point in the valley’s dining economy. The Michelin map of the Bay Area has long been weighted toward San Francisco and Wine Country, and the South Bay’s starred rooms tend to be the ones that have outlasted multiple tech cycles rather than chased them. A restaurant that has carried the same name on the same block since 1952, and a star since 2008, is a reminder that the region’s fine-dining base was built on hospitality to an affluent residential market, not on expense accounts alone.
The published numbers tell a parallel story. A four-course prix fixe that rose from $128 in July to $138 by late October is a small move in absolute terms, but it tracks the cost pressure every full-service kitchen on the Peninsula describes: labor, rent and imported luxury ingredients like A5 wagyu and caviar. Whether diners keep treating Saratoga as a destination will say a lot about how much of Silicon Valley’s new wealth is willing to spend its evenings close to home.
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.
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