Cyrus

10/5/2009
Healdsburg, CA: 29 North Street - (707) 433-3311
Rating (1-10): 10
Price Range: Break the Bank

"A True All-Star"
There are some restaurants that are perhaps beyond this writer's humble critiquing abilities. Cyrus is one of them. This restaurant performs at a high level both in the cooking and the service delivery - with great attention to detail, warmth and friendliness, and utterly delicious food. Be prepared for a top notch type dining experience: swarms of dining room attendants, small, delicately put together plates, formal wear, and carts of lots of expensive stuff (cheese, champagne, desserts, etc). Though this type of dining experience is inevitably a bit stiff, this is a place where it's relatively comfortable. If you want a lavish, pampered experience, Cyrus is a strong recommendation for a date, family dinner, or other type of celebration - at a price tag that you can adjust to your liking.

At Cyrus you have a choice between a couple of tasting menus - the 8-course and the 5-course, and a vegetarian option for both. There are also wine pairing options and cheese courses as well as a champagne cart to kick off the meal. What's nice is that you're not under pressure to do one thing or the other. The server was refreshingly honest, not pushy in any way. When I asked about the vegetarian menu, he said, "Well, it will be delicious, but for me? I need meat." I totally agreed and I'm glad he helped me right my ship. Our dinner selection was the 5-course non-vegetarian menu - except we were also allowed to substitute a corresponding vegetarian selection if we so pleased. In essence, you can craft your own tasting menu if you want; this is a highly accommodating feature that allows guests to explore the menu.

The meal begins with some canapes and amuse bouches which alone could be a great appetizer. The peach, greens, and cream does exactly what it's meant to do: get your hunger going, excite the taste buds and your anticipation. What follows is a parade of entirely distinct courses, each with highly concentrated flavors and pleasing texture. The portions look small but turn out to be just right: They leave you wanting a little bit more but doesn't allow you to get full or sick of it at any point. Our plates ranged from lightly seared hamachi to stuffed fried squash blossoms filled with incredible eggplant and garlic filling to fatty roasted duck to intense mushroom risotto to big fat scallops to lamb tenderloin to foie gras to desserts plates with at least 5 components including, if you're lucky, chocolate filled doughnuts. Pulling off a menu of this breadth and complexity is more difficult to execute that almost any one of the guests can comprehend. But like a superior athlete, they just make it look easy.

What you see in these dishes are meticulously constructed components presented with flare and disciplined creativity. It's not the silly kind of "throw everything you can at it and hope for the best" style creativity - far from it. A large scallop is seared and sits in a pool of ginger-shiso broth, adding a unique feature to what my otherwise be a commoditized dish; it's also one of several items with a distinctly Japanese accent. The mushrooms risotto packs an intense mushroom-ness as such a risotto should, but with strong chive foam and subtle chestnut flavor. The roasted duck is just simply delicious and comes with a slightly greasy but homey potato cake. The lamb roulade is perfectly cooked disks of pink lamb meat which is nice to look at; oddly there was one flavor to every part of this dish which was overwhelmingly strong and heavyhanded - like a dish with too much cumin. Overall, for a lineup of dishes of this complexity, these were artfully plated and impressively executed.

The service is very well-informed, professional, courteous, and warm. They're also the size of a small army and all over every detail. What's nice is that, even though this is a markedly upscale experience, the restaurant retains the warmth and down to Earth vibe of the wine country. As a party on the younger side, we were treated accordingly, with a little more of a relaxed feel without being condescending. We never felt pressure. We were allowed to have no worries and nothing out of our immediate grasp.

All of this comes at a bit over $100, which is about as low as you can go for an experience like this and expect the restaurant to stay in business. In any line of work, I can appreciate commitment to excellence and performance to match. A number rating on a place like Cyrus is essentially meaningless - I loved it and to me, it was an all-star performance. There's no need to focus on a rank or number or grade or star or comparison on it. Doing so would only distract from the enjoyment of it. At the end of your meal, you have a selection of as many house made treats as you want - chocolates, caramels, lollipops and a brownie packaged with a gold label that reads: "Tomorrow??" That's probably the right call since you're going to be really full but also because you'll maybe be able to savor the experience for another day.