After maintaining a Michelin star at The Plumed Horse for a decade, chef/owner Peter Armellino is looking forward to opening a “liberating” new pasta project just steps from his flagship restaurant in Saratoga. His casual spinoff restaurant, Pasta Armellino, opens on Monday, February 5 at 14560 Big Basin Way.
The move is part of the “little empire” Armellino says he’s building under the banner of a newly-formed group, The Plumed Horse Collection. That includes a recently-opened chocolate shop, the Plumed Horse Chocolaterie, whose chocolates, modeled after jewels, are apparently prized just as highly, selling out by the box daily. Armellino also serves them by cart to conclude meals at The Plumed Horse.
The Pasta Armellino space, where an original back barn was converted to a kitchen, is casual and simple, befitting the concept. “It’s just house made pastas with a rotating seasonal menu,” Armellino explains, “and there’s no wait staff — people come in, order, sit down, and the cooks will come out and bring dishes out to you. So for me, you get to have a very casual interaction with guests.”
Prices, too, are relaxed (at least by Michelin standards) with pastas from $12 to $18 and salads, soups, and bread for less. The idea “is basically to take fine-dining ingredients and techniques and philosophies and apply them to a vehicle like pasta. It’s a very simple ingredient structure, but you can put your own spin on it.”
Dishes on the opening menu include orecchiette (with braised beef short rib, housemade ricotta, and lemon agrumato), pepper rigatoni (with Berkshire pork, smoked mozzarella, and spicy calabrian peppers), and a simple spaghetti (with san Marzano tomato, parmesan, and butter). To accompany the food, Plumed Horse Sommelier Jeffrey Perisho will pour wines from Italy and the US, including some that fall under the Plumed Horse Collection imprimatur.
Beyond cultivating a relaxed atmosphere with his new restaurant, Armellino hopes he’s also cultivating more talented employees. “When you’re in the same restaurant for ten years, you attract a lot of talent, you cultivate talent, and then people tend to move on, they go to new places,” Armellino says. That’s what he did, cooking from one impressive kitchen to the next. The chef started in New York at Gotham Bar & Grill and Gramercy Tavern, next moved to San Francisco as sous chef at Jardiniere, then became chef de cuisine at Village Pub in Woodside under chef Mark Sullivan and, later, Laurent Manrique’s chef de cuisine at Campton Place and Aqua.
With more ventures at The Plumed Horse Collection, Armellino suggests, there’s more room in the stable, so to speak. Bursting with ideas, he’s already thinking about what the next project might be — maybe a bakery. But fans of the Plumed Horse don’t have to worry about Armellino’s attention wandering. “The Plumed Horse will always be my baby,” he says.