Plumed Horse Restaurant in Saratoga - 11/1/08

 The newly remodeled Plumed Horse is open once again in the quaint and historic village of Downtown Saratoga located at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and a hop over the next town of Los Gatos, home to the famous Manresa restaurant. 

 Since 1952, the Plumed Horse has been entertaining the South Bay crowds with elaborate French food and an extensive fine wine list but the new owners, a new chef, Peter Armellino, and a multimillion-dollar redo have made this into an entirely new restaurant.  Its cutting-edge design, blown-glass chandeliers that change colors, and a ultra modern two-story glass wine cellar, all creating a wonderful stage for the contemporary California cuisine featuring locally sourced and seasonal fresh and luxury ingredients.

The main entrance of newly remodeled Plumed Horse. 

Look at the top of the picture and you will see a plume (feather in French), the new logo of the Plumed horse. The new logo, a single feather replaced the old logo which is the cart horse for which the 55 years old restaurant is named after.  If you are looking for the old Plumed horse you will not find it, the only thing left is the name and location other than that it is a brand new glittering restaurant.

 

Tonight, here we are at the Plumed Horse to celebrate Huyen's birthday and also Phuc's and Huyen's 25th anniversary of their first date!

Group portrait!

 

We got the Rose room, a fully private room that can accommodate up to 24 guests in a multiple table arrangement to form a huge single square table. 

Take a look at the center piece, notice how small it is!  Well,  I'll tell you  a story about it later on.

Note: We had a few technical problems with our camera so we had to borrow Spencer's camera and in the process we lost some pictures of  Maily/Tuan, Dung/Phuong, Thao/Dung!

 

Doan and Tuan

 

Me, Tuan and Hanh

Duy and Thuy

Huyen, The birthday girl and Phuc

 

Phuc making a toast!

Here he is telling us stories about when he first met Huyen and he is also introducing all the wines that we are going to have with our meal for the evening!

 

The Wines specially selected by Phuc

View of all the red wines Phuc brought for the evening.

From the Left bank:

1989 Château Lynch Bages - classic style from a great vintage, 1st time for our group 

1989 Château Montrose (one of Huyen's and mine all time favorite - also one of the few 100pts wine)

1998 Château Lafite-Rothschild (from Spencer's birth year collection, 1st time for our group)

 

From the Right bank:

1995 La Consellante - Pomerol (one of the wine we all loved the first time we all dined out together at Water Crest in 2004, if you can remember back that long).

2000 Canon La Gaffelière (our group favorite St. Emilion, we had consumed many 1995 and 1998 bottles, actually all of them).

 

We started the evening with the 2000 Château Canon-La-Gaffelière, Premier Cru.

Note that the restaurant is only using Wine Glass and Decanters from the costly Riedel.

Does wine really taste better in a Riedel glass vs. a plain glass?  Not sure but it definitely feels more luxurious!

 

Château Canon-La-Gaffelière is personally my favorite wine of the evening but not everyone has the same opinion as I do.

The second wine we had were the 1995 Château La-Conseilante Pomerol

Then we moved on to the much anticipated 1998  Château Lafite-Rothschild (Magnum bottle)

And then we end up our meal with the 1989 Château Lynch Bages

And in between our meal we also drank the 1988 & 1997 Chateaux Rieussec Sauternes with the Foie Gras.  According to Phuc, we drank them before and loved them!  Well, this time they did not disappoint either!  Both bottles were fantastic.

 

Next...The food

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