Top image: The R.O. Tripp store on Kings Mountain Road, built in 1854, is one of Woodside’s oldest landmarks. It is not The Village Pub, which is on Woodside Road. Photo: Eugene Zelenko / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The Village Pub has held a Michelin star every year since 2009, according to the restaurant’s website, and for eight nights this month it will charge $225 a person for a menu built around three kinds of truffle. That price, posted on its fall truffle menu, is $95 above the restaurant’s regular three-course dinner. It is also a useful marker of where Peninsula fine dining sits a quarter-century after the Pub reopened at 2967 Woodside Road.
This is the third installment of The Reported Table this week, after Luna Mexican Kitchen in San Jose and The Old Post Office in Burlingame, which Bacchus also runs.
What the menu says
The regular dinner is a prix fixe at $130 a person, according to the dinner menu posted on the restaurant’s website, dated Oct. 14 and checked Sunday, Nov. 8. Guests choose a starter, a main and a dessert. Starters listed include a Brentwood corn raviolo, kampachi crudo and a mushroom consommé. Mains include almond wood-grilled 38 North duck breast, roasted Alaskan halibut and olive oil-poached wild king salmon. Several dishes carry supplements: $25 for Dungeness crab with Carnaroli rice, $25 for a Snake River Farms New York strip, and $50 to add Alba white truffle to chestnut cavatelli, which is also offered à la carte at $85.
Every menu carries the same line at the bottom: “In support of San Mateo County employer mandated expenses, a 6% fee will be added.”
The bar’s Pub menu is the lower-cost way in, with a $31 Pub burger on an English muffin bun, a $34 butter-poached Maine lobster roll and $10 French fries. The corkage fee is $75 per 750-milliliter bottle, according to the menus page. The restaurant lists dinner from 5 to 9 p.m., lunch on Fridays and weekend brunch.
The truffle menu runs Nov. 18 through Nov. 25 alongside the regular menu. Its listed courses are a Jidori egg confit tartlet with Burgundy black truffle, a Périgord black truffle vol-au-vent with chicken leg, a roasted rabbit roulade with Alba white truffle, and an apple tarte Tatin with Burgundy black truffle gelato. An optional wine pairing is $95, with a 2018 Rhys Pinot Noir from the Santa Cruz Mountains among the listed wines. The restaurant’s Oct. 24 announcement says availability is “strictly limited to this eight-day window” because it depends on the harvest. A $185 Christmas Eve menu was posted Nov. 6.
Who’s behind it
Tim Stannard started Bacchus Management Group in 2000, and The Village Pub opened a year later as its first restaurant, according to the group’s team page. The group now also runs Spruce in San Francisco, Selby’s in Atherton, which we profiled in October, Pizza Antica and The Village Bakery.
The Almanac’s June 2001 report on the reopening called the Pub “a beloved fixture in Woodside since 1958.” It said the remodeled two-story building replicated the original facade, with a 70-seat dining room and a 48-seat bar and lounge. Opening entrées then included olive oil-poached wild salmon for $24 and double-cut lamb chops for $29.
Mark Sullivan, the opening executive chef, now oversees the cuisine for Bacchus’ seven restaurants, the group says. Its team page says chef Nicolas Brichet, formerly culinary director of the Crenn Dining Group, leads the culinary vision for Spruce, The Village Pub and Selby’s. Jonathan Granada, a French Laundry alumnus who joined in 2025, oversees daily kitchen operations across the portfolio. The restaurant says its wine program lists more than 3,500 labels and has won Wine Spectator’s Grand Award every year since 2016.
What the critics have said
The 2026 Michelin Guide listing gives the Pub one star. Its inspectors write, “Don’t be fooled by the quaint name; this is a sophisticated operation.” They single out the warm Parker House rolls that start every meal and a wine list heavy on Burgundy and Bordeaux “sprinkled with some real bargains.” Bacchus says the San Francisco Chronicle gave the Pub 3½ stars soon after it opened. The Almanac reported in December 2009 that the Pub won its first star in the 2009 guide and was one of four Bay Area restaurants south of San Francisco to win a star in the 2010 edition.
The record
The Chronicle could not retrieve a San Mateo County Environmental Health inspection report for The Village Pub through the county’s online portal for this column. We will add the record when we obtain it.
The long view
The Almanac’s 2001 menu and this fall’s menu share a dish: olive oil-poached wild salmon, a $24 entrée then and one of the main-course choices on a $130 prix fixe now, before the 6% fee. The Pub’s staying power has made it a reference point for Peninsula dining, and its menus now itemize labor costs. The truffle week and the $185 Christmas Eve menu are holiday offerings priced for a Woodside clientele. For readers watching the region’s restaurant economy, the more telling number may be the surcharge line printed on every menu: in San Mateo County, the cost of employing a kitchen now gets its own line on the check.
Sources
- The Village Pub: about page, hours, awards (checked Nov. 8, 2026)
- Dinner menu, Pub menu, truffle menu and menus page (checked Nov. 8, 2026)
- The Village Pub news posts, Oct. 24 and Nov. 6, 2026
- Michelin Guide: The Village Pub (2026 listing)
- Bacchus Management Group team page
- The Almanac, “A new Village Pub opens” (June 13, 2001) and Dec. 3, 2009 profile
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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