Michelin-starred Saratoga restaurant removes half of its tables to calm concerns

Saratoga’s Plumed Horse always has been a serene dining destination.

Now it will be even more so.

To help assuage customer fears in this coronavirus era, the Michelinstarred restaurant’s owners have decided to put 6 feet of space or more between tables, halving the number of diners they can accommodate. Where there were 36 tables in two dining rooms, there are now 18.

“The Plumed Horse is a Silicon Valley icon. We want to be the first to have a guest-first, staff-first policy when it comes to health,” co-owner Joshua Weeks said.

Besides expanding the space between tables — at 6 feet, the distance is twice the 1-meter rule that European restaurants are using — the Plumed Horse has adopted stringent cleaning policies and is offering “black glove” service. All front-of-house employees now are wearing black protective gloves that are replaced after every dish is placed on, or removed from, a table. And the restaurant has increased the amount of paid sick time employees receive.

The Plumed Horse is making such moves as it faces the loss of 50 percent of its business from the high-tech spenders who typically fill the restaurant’s private dining rooms on weeknights, including Apple, Google, Cisco, NetFlix, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Hewlett-Packard.

Many of those Silicon Valley giants, worried about COVID-19, have advised their employees to telecommute and have canceled face-to-face meetings and conferences. According to executive chef Peter Armellino, that’s bound to affect restaurants and caterers throughout the valley — and not just Plumed Horse and its sister restaurants on Big Basin Way.

“When you take our largest customers and have them working from home, there is no corporate dining, no corporate spending,” Weeks said.

So it was doubly important, Weeks said, to address the concerns of the Plumed Horse’s devoted local customers, who filled more than 10 of the newly spaced tables Tuesday night as well as the chef’s table and seats at the bar.

This weekend, the two large parties that had made reservations are sticking with their plans, having been apprised of the blackglove policy and the addition of a full-time staffer devoted to sanitation.

The local chamber of commerce praised the actions.

“Given the nature and speed of developments with the coronavirus, proactive initiatives such as these taken by Josh Weeks and the Plumed Horse for the benefit of its patrons and staff are to be highly commended,” said Ketan Jashapara, president of the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce.

“We are continually monitoring the situation, and mindful of the need of businesses and individuals to take a pragmatic, sensible approach with respect to safety precautions.”

More than $2,000 worth of gloves have been ordered for Plumed Horse and Weeks’ other restaurants, La Fondue and Pasta Armellino, where the new safety measures are also in place.

To protect the health of all employees, from the lowest-seniority staffers to the highest seniority (at 30 years, that’s Plumed Horse maitre d’ Manuel Urbano), the amount of paid sick leave has been increased from five days a year to five days plus two weeks to cover any coronavirus or other flu cases.