Past Events

Friday, December 21, 2007
Tree Trimming Party
We invite all our guests to come and trim our Christmas tree, and we want each guests to bring something they made to hang on the tree - paper or cranberry chains, origami birds, cardboard ornaments, whatever. Everyone who brings an ornament, no matter how exotic or homely, will be rewarded with a free glass of sparkling wine in front of the fireplace. We'll have Cole Broderick start playing carols and jazz standards at 6 p.m. You can stay for dinner or bar snacks if you want, or just hang out for the music and free bubbles and be on your way. We thought it might be a nice break for people as they finish their last-minute holiday shopping and preparations.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, December 24 and 25, 2007
We will be offering a five-course prix-fixe menu.

  1. choice of raw oysters mignonette
    or escargots en surprise with fennel and cream or pear and foie gras tart or cara cara orange and braised fennel salad.
  2. exotic mushroom consommé with Christmas colors
  3. goose à la Bigarade (goose à l'orange with Seville oranges) or fresh baked ham with Tahitian flavors (vanilla, papaya, carambola, pineapple, star fruit or whole branzini (Mediterranean sea bass) with blood orange and herbs or forest mushroom and truffled salsify tart with barley risotto and brussel sprouts.
  4. bejewelled pomegranate salad
  5. mincemeat pie
    or apple pie with English cheddar
    or walnut tart
    or chocolate mocha Yule log

We will be taking reservations for this fabulous five-course feast from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. on December 24 and 25. (No à la carte menu will be offered.) The price will be $75 per person for food, plus beverages, tax and gratuity. Children under 12 eat for $25.

New Year's Eve, December 31, 2007
Paul has come up with two extraordinarily elegant menus for New Year's Eve, one a five-courser for early birds and the other an 9- course extravaganza for those who want to hang out until the wee hours. Our early seating, with tables available at 5, 5:30, 6 and 6:30 p.m., will feature the following five-course menu (with a glass of Champagne included) for $80 per person, plus tax and gratuity:

  1. oysters and caviar
    or terrine of foie gras
    or terrine of squash and salsify
    or quail with Serrano ham, grapes and wild rice
  2. Good Luck New Year's soup (with ham and beans)
  3. Sika venison with chocolate and pomegranate or fish (to be announced) or filet mignon à la ficelle truffée or soufflé aux champignons et Gruyère
  4. pear and honeyed walnut salad
  5. black and white mousses or baklava with pistachios, rosewater syrup and gold dust or pina colada Napoléon or almond pithiviers

The New Year's Eve all-night party starts at 8 p.m., with seatings available at 8, 8:30, 9 and 9:30 p.m. The 9-course menu will cost $130 per person, plus tax and gratuity and will feature:

  1. escargots mille fenouille
  2. oysters and caviar
    or terrine of foie gras
  3. terrine of squash and salsify
    or quail with Serrano ham, grapes and wild rice
  4. Good Luck New Year's soup (with ham and beans)
  5. Sika venison with chocolate and pomegranate or fish (to be announced) or filet mignon à la ficelle truffée or soufflé aux champignons et Gruyère
  6. pear and honeyed walnut salad
  7. a selection of fine cheeses
  8. black and white mousses or baklava with pistachios, rosewater syrup and gold dust or pina colada Napoléon or almond pithiviers
  9. cookies, chocolates and coffee

Live Piano Jazz
Jazz pianist Cole Broderick plays the baby grand Tuesday through Friday night, and during Sunday brunch from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. (barring special events that preclude live music.)
Cost: No cover charge

Tango Wednesdays
The members of Tango Fusion, a local tango club, gather in our lounge after their Wednesday night class ends at 8:30 for cocktails, snacks and dancing. The public is welcome to come hang out at the bar, join in and pick up a few dance pointers from instructors Diane Lachtrupp and Johnny Martinez. For more information about local classes by Diane and Johnny, see the Saratoga Savoy website at http://www.saratogasavoy.com/files/instructors.html
Cost: No cover charge


Sunday Jazz Brunch
Jazz pianist Cole Broderick plays our baby grand from 10:30 to 2 p.m. each Sunday. Breakfast is served from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Brunch specials, posted each Friday at http://www.chezsophie.com/newsletter.htm are added to the menu at 10 a.m. The bar opens for Champagne mimosas, Bloody Marys and other treats at the stroke of noon.

Tasting menus
Chef's Choice seven-course tasting menu available each night. The menus are designed based on the best and most creative dishes Chef Paul K. Parker is serving each evening. We will pair wines for you or you can order from our extensive wine list.
Cost: $75 per person, plus tax and tip. Everyone at the table must partake in the tasting menu

If you're feeling less impromptu, you can call ahead to arrange a special tasting menu with the number of courses and wine pairings designed to suit your capacity, dietary restrictions and budget. Tasting menus arranged in advance will be printed on commemorative vellum scrolls personalized with the name of the host or the reason for the event.

Cost: $50 to $200, depending on the number of courses and the wines selected; available for two to 75 guests
Call Cheryl to make arrangements 518.583.3538

Tuesday, October 31 Halloween Party for Kids
5 p.m. until it ends
We'll use our upstairs private dining room for an all-ages costume party with games, favors, magic tricks, food and prizes. Parents are welcome to join in the party, or have dinner in the downstairs dining room or at the bar while the kids play.
Cost: $5 per child
Reservations appreciated


Warm Lake Wine Dinner
November 7 and 8, 6:30 p.,m. each night
These two dinners are limited to 20 people each night around a single table. We will feature the wines of Warm Lake, a New York State winery on the Niagara Escarpment near Lake Ontario. The winemaking, done on a small scale, employs Old World techniques; the pinot noir fruit is triaged, punched down manually and vinified in French oak barrels. The grapes from four different sections of the vineyard are vinified separately, than blended by vintner Michael Von Heckler to make two dinner wines, Warm Lake Estate and Mountain Road. http://www.warmlakeestate.com

Our wine dinners will feature a tasting of each of the four component wines and the Estate wine. Then we'll sit down to a warming soup as a palate cleanser and enjoy the Mountain Road with coq au vin. We'll finish with Warm Lake's dessert pinot noir with cheeses and desserts. http://www.warmlakeestate.com
Cost: $80 per person, plus tax and gratuity

Thanksgiving Dinner
Thursday, November 23
Special prix fixe wine dinner
Limited to 20 people around a communal table, we will be serving up a five-course heritage breed turkey tasting menu with four spectacular wines. This is a particularly good option for people who love to dine well and in a festive setting, but won't be with their families on our national day of gratitude.
It starts at at 6:30 p.m.
Cost: $100 per person, plus tax and gratuity
Also, turkey dinner will be offered in our main dining room, in addition to our regular menu from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. It will include free-range, all-natural local roast turkey and trimmings and pie for dessert for $35 per person, or your guests may order from our regular menu. Turkey dinner for children under 12 is $15. A few large tables still available for family groups.
Call for reservations 518.583.3538

Mediterranean Wine Dinner details New Years Eve 2005 photos"The Nose Knows" Wine Tasting

“One-Pot Meals” Cooking Class with Chef Paul Parker photos

Saratoga 4x4 at Chez Sophie March 15, 2005 photos

“The Big Cheese” Wine dinner at Chez Sophie
Five courses, each including or based on a different type of cheese, presented by Chef Paul Parker.

Bubbles of France Wine Dinner - details

Burgundy wine dinner - details

Chef Paul Parker cooks a dinner at the James Beard House in New York City - details & photos

The Saratoga 4x4 2004- details | photos

Previous Cooking classes - photos

“Tour de France” wine dinners - details

Languedoc-Roussillon Dinner, January 2003 - photos

Rhone Wine Dinner, December 2002 - photos

“The 2004 Saratoga Wine and Food Festival - photos

“Tour de France” wine dinners January 21st and 22nd

These wine dinners will start in the Northeastern part of France. In Bergheim on the 110-mile long Alsatian route du vin. This picturesque village has cobbled streets, medieval timber-framed houses and Renaissance fountains. Marcel Deiss will provide our first wine, the extraordinary 1997 Bergheim Gewurztraminer, which should burst across our clean palates with a lean, sinewy texture, bright acidity and the minerally complexity of hot stones.

Chef Paul plans to put together a regionally inspired appetizer of a tender slice of slow-cooked pork with fresh persimmon and a vanilla bean sauce. The persimmon should bring out the tropical fruit and green tea flavors in the Gewurztraminer. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to use pork from an Alsatian black pig raised by one of our local farmers.

We’ll get back in our chauffeured Citroën Pallas (for a photo of this dream car see http://www.schoenleber.com) and travel 200 miles to Mont Avril, a tiny 48-acre holding of Domaine Michel Goubard et Fils on a sloping hillside in southern Burgundy’s Côte Chalonnaise. We’ll stop for a delicate, light, tart, earthy, wild strawberry-flavored pinot noir made in 1999, paired with a simple dish of river fish, probably trout, in a red wine sauce.

We’ll get back in the car for a 150-mile ride to Tain l’Hermitage in the Northern Rhône. There we’ll stop at Jean-Luc Colombo’s winery for a glass of the viognier he calls “La Violette.”

Colombo is a pharmacist, turned wine consultant turned vigneron. This floral, smoky dry white wine will be paired with a delicate chicken forcemeat dish.

The next stop will be 200 miles later at Pierre Clavel’s estate in La Mejanelle, for a taste of “Les Garrigues.” We tasted the other two wines in Clavel’s Languedoc-Roussillon trilogy at our wine dinners in December. This deep, dark garnet syrah-grenache blend is muscular and spicy, with flavors of dark cherries and blackberries, ripe plum and wild game. It is spicy and chewy and should be a good match with lamb and black olives.

Our last stop will be 225 miles away in Saussignac, to the south of Bordeaux for Armelle & Jean-Marie Huré’s 1998 Chateau Tourmentine “Chemin Neuf”. This golden dessert wine is complex wine with a perfect balance of fruit and sugar. It should be a perfect match to a cake that Paul plans to make with one of our local farmstead cheeses.

Seating each
night is limited to 20 people around a single table. Tickets are $75 per
person, plus tax and tip. Substitutions can be made for people who don’t eat meat. The dinners start at 6:30 p.m. each night.


 
 
CHEZ SOPHIE