Co-owners Jim Stump, left, and his wife, Angelique Shepherd, pose on the front patio of their new Los Gatos restaurant, Shepherd & Sims. Of course, he didn’t go far - he’s been operating his popular restaurants The Table and Forthright in San Jose and Campbell, respectively, and will soon open Lamella Tavern. But the new venture brings him back to his old stamping grounds, where in 1992 he became executive chef of the Los Gatos Brewing Co. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)Ĭhef-restaurateur Jim Stump is back in Los Gatos after a seven-year absence. And Jim says they’ll be building out the list with more reserve options down the line.A most appropriate mural at the new Los Gatos restaurant, Shepherd & Sims. On the wine side, they’re easing in with a list that skips the usual California chardonnay and cabernet in favor of selections from less well-known regions. There will be two to three cocktails on draft, but you’ll be just as welcome to order a beer and shot as you are to request a crystal clear cube of ice for your whiskey. The back bar is intended to have mass appeal showcasing everything from Absolut and Patron to Pappy and Weller. On the beverage side, the Stumps have made Shepherd & Sims a true family affair, turning over the keys to the cocktail program to their son and letting their daughter curate the wine list. They intentionally chose to open in an “underserved” neighborhood, Angelique says, eschewing downtown Los Gatos and its abundance of independently owned restaurants in favor of a more out-of-the-way part of town, where the couple says most dining options are chains. “I don’t want it to be a special occasion restaurant, I want to have caviar on a Tuesday afternoon,” Jim says. There’s also caviar and pate and ratatouille if diners want to take a trip to France, but one thing both Jim and Angelique stress is that they don’t want the restaurant to feel inaccessible. At Shepherd & Sims, Jim has partnered with chef de cuisine Robert De La Mora to create a menu that’s rooted in Californian ingredients and infused with flavors from Mexico - the restaurant’s pork chop, for example, gets an al pastor-inspired marinade and pineapple puree crown - to Japan - with Yukon potatoes arriving alongside a kombu butter accoutrement. The Stump’s other restaurants include the Table in San Jose, Forthright in Campbell, and the Vesper, a cocktail lounge also in Campbell. “We want to enjoy life and we want people to enjoy life with us,” “The menu of this restaurant is really an example of Angelique and me, how we like to eat and what we want,” Jim says. The restaurant is distinctly personal for the couple, its name being a mashup of both their former last names, and the menu stemming from the kinds of meals they love to share together.
And that’s exactly what they’re hoping to do once again with their newest project Shepherd & Sims, an upscale but approachable fine dining restaurant serving a menu that veers from pickled fried green tomatoes with buttermilk dressing to 45-day dry-aged New York steak. Jim and Angelique Stump are no strangers to creating the kind of neighborhood restaurants diners can return to time and again - for weeknight dinners, weekend celebrations, and just about everything in between.
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