Amandine Lounge
Jean-Luc Kayigire opened restaurants from San Francisco to Japan for fifteen years, then built the small cocktail room he wanted in his own town, in the old Honcho space on First Street.
Why go
The Town Crier profiled him in May 2019, in the bar's pop-up months: a Los Altos Hills local who opened his first establishment at 22 and took this space on an offer from Los Altos Community Investments he says he could not refuse.1 I'd like it to be an intimate place,
he said then, a bar that just feels very comfortable to sit down in.
1 The room's focal point is a wall map with every continent framed and LED-lit, and the bar runs cocktail specials tied to whichever region is celebrating, story printed in the menu.1 Larry Chu of Chef Chu's and Vickie Breslin of The Post helped him open; his favorite restaurant is Chef Chu's, which fed the bar on weekends in 2019 before its own kitchen ran.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever the continent wall is celebrating. The holiday specials come with the story behind them.1
- Avoid: planning dinner here without checking. Chef Chu's brought the food on Fridays and Saturdays when the bar opened in 2019, and seven years on that may well have changed.1
Good to know
- The chamber lists it at 235 First St under the project name, with a live phone line.2
Verdict
could-visit — One opening profile from May 2019 and a live chamber listing make up the whole published record, which makes it promising rather than proven seven years on. Kayigire told the Town Crier he wanted an intimate room, and the framed continent wall driving holiday cocktail specials, story printed in the menu, is the kind of device that either charms or wears thin; nobody has written up which. Larry Chu of Chef Chu's and Vickie Breslin of The Post helped him open, which says something about his standing among Los Altos operators.