Cyrus

It was supposed to be a classy affair: I imagined us reverentially keeping our elbows off the table, using the long-forgotten knowledge of college's business club's etiquette class and receiving service from a Mr. Darcy look-alike in a penguin tux.  I imagined a string quartet playing music in the background with dedication akin to that of the Titanic's string quartets, entertaining the first-class customers up until their doomed end.  


However, dinner at Cyrus, a two-star Michelin restaurant in Healdsburg, with Mitra and our mothers, quickly devolved into three hours of bets on the finishing time of dinner and ages of each of our servers.  We quickly discovered the inner snarkiness of the bread guy, that the head waiter realized just as much as we did how ridiculous the whole charade was and that the supposed synchronization of the service (two waiters would come for each course and set down our plates at the same time) was not repeated when the plates were taken away.  The only saving grace was the wine guy, who I truly believed would have taken us away on a journey to South Tuscany with his piercing eyes and detailed chronicles of our wine pairings, all while the hypothetical ship we were on was sinking.  The bread guy would have jumped in a rowboat and sailed off at the first sign of a glacier.


We decided to go all out with the eight-course meal and shared wine pairings. I won't bore you with all of the details of each course, because they were all delicious, but you can see the full dinner menu here.  Here were some of the most memorable moments:


Most tongue-tickling:
We started off with a tripod presentation of small bites representing the five tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour and savory.  Our taste buds were tickled by salty chorizo powder, a sour blood orange tart, a bitter radish with leek ash and a savory umami.  I particularly liked the sweet bite, a molecular gastronomy concoction comprised of a prickly pear juice sphere with vanilla salt which spewed juicy flavor when eaten.  

Weirdest ingredient:
Yuba: Yuba is the film created when soy milk is boiled and then cooled rapidly.  (Is this a real thing?  When this happens, isn't this generally discarded?)  Additional research shows that yuba is often used to wrap dim sum or bunched together to form a meat substitute.  It was also a layer in this multi-layered between-course small plate.

Most straight-from-the-animal:
This bone marrow custard was served inside a bone.  The light salad on the side was absolutely incredible.

Favorite savory dish:
This John Dory with greens on the side was buttery, tender and tasty.

Runner-up Favorite:
There must have been something in the Healdsburg air that the fish were responding well to because the sashimi appetizer, doused in oxtail-umeshu consomme (umeshu is a plum liqueur and combined with oxtail stock, created a sauce with sweet and sour notes), was great: meaty and full of flavor.

The Worst:
I'm sure the butterscotch sundae on chocolate soil with a popcorn tuile, pictured below, is a technically advanced, richly nuanced dish to some high brow foodies.  But for us, it was a little tasteless and not satisfying at all.  I would have preferred a scoop of ice cream with some caramel sauce and M&M's on top.

Best Comeback:
The dessert above was the last dish listed on the menu, but with these multi-course meals, there always ends up being 4 or 5 extra things to eat along the way.  For the grand finale, a cart holding a selection of treats was wheeled out and with calorie-clogged hearts and heavy stomachs, we chose a selection of marshmallows, macarons, brownie pieces and truffles to wash down the meal and temper the blow of the final check.   It was amazing.  Our collective plate is below.
  

All in all, it was a satisfying and entertaining meal.  For meals like these, bragging rights and good stories seem to be just as meaningful as culinary taste and execution.  Taking all these factors into consideration, dinner at Cyrus was a raging success.  


Disclaimer: I apologize for the poor quality of the photos.  In an attempt to not disrupt the flow of the meal and embarrass my dinner mates, I was subtle and surreptitious in taking pictures, not pausing to focus or use flash.  Based on the behavior of our table throughout the meal, I should have been a much more obnoxious photographer.