The first thing you should know about the Pleasanton Hotel is that you can’t get a room there—not because it’s so exclusive, or you don’t have the right connections, but because there aren’t any. Some time back, the owners decided to convert the guest rooms upstairs to offices and concentrate on the restaurant downstairs.

Under executive chef Neil Marquis, the Pleasanton Hotel offers contemporary American food for lunch and dinner. That’s just the starting point for an extensive slate of special events: live dance bands, blues, twice-a-month Mystery Dinner Theatre evenings and monthly winery dinners. The winery dinners include an extra touch: Chef Marquis starts the evening with a cooking demonstration, showing how one of the courses is prepared. The meal gets matched with bottles from a partner winery, sometimes local, sometimes well-known names from around the state.

Dinners in the first few months of 2005 will feature the wines of Cedar Mountain, Steven Kent, Rios-Lovell and Crooked Vine — some of Livermore’s best. – Tim Patterson

Pleasanton Hotel, 855 Main Street, Pleasanton, CA (925) 846.8106