On a blustery evening last weekend, cold winds pushed white-capped waves across Lake Tahoe, but inside Savoie, a buzzy new restaurant in Tahoe City, the feeling was all warmth and merriment. 

A crowd filed in through Savoie’s giant front door to get their first glimpse of the new restaurant at a soft opening on Saturday. An antler chandelier was the first thing to see in the entryway, before guests walked up a staircase and stepped past a stone fireplace into the spacious bar. Staff were fast at work in the open kitchen, sending out plates of confit salmon on baguettes and pommes rosti with crème fraiche and golden Ossetra caviar. Vases of wildflowers and white linens adorned the tables in the dining room. Guests sat on mid-century French barstools, sipping glasses of crisp white wine, taking it all in. Above the bustle, a huge taxidermied moose kept a silent watch.

Savoie is the creation of celebrated chefs Mark and Alison Sullivan, who sold their home in San Francisco and moved to Tahoe about five years ago. They brought two decades of experience opening Michelin-starred restaurants in the Bay Area, including the Village Pub in Woodside. Mark is a chef-partner with Bacchus Restaurant Group. Alison is a pastry chef who has worked in France and the Bay Area. They’ve now pivoted to focus on Savoie, a project that’s described as a family endeavor.

Article continues below this ad

Chefs Mark and Alison Sullivan opened Savoie, a new fine dining restaurant in Tahoe City, on July 1. 

Chefs Mark and Alison Sullivan opened Savoie, a new fine dining restaurant in Tahoe City, on July 1. 

Chefs Mark and Alison Sullivan opened Savoie, a new fine dining restaurant in Tahoe City, on July 1. Savoie’s menu is inspired by cuisine made in the villages perched high in the Alps of France and Italy.

Savoie’s menu is inspired by cuisine made in the villages perched high in the Alps of France and Italy. A spread on Saturday presented a look into the menu’s highlights: Wagyu beef sliders with a nutty Comté cheese and flat bread called épogne, oeufs mayonnaise, a casserole dish with bubbling melted cheese, caramelized onions and potatoes called tartiflette Savoyard, a platter of crudites from the Tahoe City farmers market, cloud-like gougères, poached giant prawns assorted in a semicircle around a bowl of classic cocktail sauce.

Article continues below this ad

When it came to developing the menu, Mark and Alison researched the history of the Savoie, an alpine duchy that encompassed parts of France, Switzerland and Italy. The couple described driving around Mont Blanc and passing through all three countries in quick succession. 

“The historic footprint of Savoie really includes the alpine parts of Italy, down into Piedmont, Tuscany and, for a period of time, part of Sicily. And so we embraced the historic footprint of the Savoie for inspiration,” Alison said, noting they were leaning into that history to give themselves plenty of range in the........

© SFGate