cyrus wins

There are the meals you remember forever. Like my first wine dinner, which was at Justin Vineyards & Winery in Paso. I was a last-minute guest, invited to attend because several wine club members had cancelled and the marketing person thought it would be a good idea to have the local wine media take their place. (This was before I crossed over to the "dark side" known as PR.) John Besh was the chef. I had foie gras for the first time and can only describe the experience as "meat butter." Afterwards, I hung out with the staff and the cooks and smoked cigars and drank Port.

Then there was the mushroom dinner at Millennium. We had been dating for, oh, maybe a bit more than six months and had just moved to San Francisco. I was in love with everything (yes, including the 38 Geary -- those were the days). We made reservations and got as dressed up as we could and had the most beautiful meal -- an all-vegan multi-course mushroom dinner paired with wines from Coturri. Tony Coturri was there and came to our table and talked to us about his wines. There were candy cap mushrooms in the dessert. We were half-drunk and giddy when we left and stumbled toward the bus stop.

Both of those meals pale in comparison to Sunday night. I took him to Cyrus, chef Douglas Keane's restaurant in Healdsburg, for his birthday. Everything about the dinner was perfect, from the service to the food to the atmosphere. (I had been warned in advance that the restaurant could be stuffy, but it wasn't like that at all. No awkward "you look young so we'll treat you like crap" attitude. Everyone was warm and welcoming.)

We splurged and ordered the chef's tasting menu. I've heard Cyrus is the restaurant that can rival the French Laundry and make Gary Danko's cheese cart look like Trader Joe's. And after Sunday's decadent dinner, I think those rumors are entirely possible. This was our menu (which they printed out for us as a souvenir -- and which we've kept, since we're such food dorks):

* Canapés: This was a trio of bite-sized goodies. One was some type of grain with mint in a spoon. Another was a savory tart that reminded me of a super-fancy teeny-tiny pizza with perfectly balanced flavors. The last was a corn fritter.

(Also, there was bread served somewhere here with both cow's milk and goat's milk butter and two kinds of salt. I love butter. I love salt. I had to exercise extreme self-control to keep from stuffing my face with just the bread.)

* Amuse Bouche: For some reason, I can't remember what this was. But it was a bite-size something. I think maybe the bread obscured my memory. I was really, really into the bread.

* "Vitello Tonnato": The restaurant's take on the traditional Italian summer dish of veal in tuna sauce, this was thinly sliced seared veal and seared tuna with haricot verts, a quail egg and a thick French fry. The flavors were incredibly delicate. It was freaking unbelievable.

* Seared foie gras with pistachio streusel doughnut and bing cherry compote: Um, do I really even have to elaborate on this? Doughnut + foie + it's cherry season = Oh my good god.

(I think maybe the first palate cleanser came here, but I'm not so sure. It could have been after the next dish or the one after that. What I do remember, though, is that instead of the usual sorbet in a cup, they served the sorbet as popsicle sticks, and they brought them out to you in a floral arrangement. You plucked a popsicle off and then ate the sorbet. How's that for presentation?)

* Soft shell crab with sweet corn, mussel-saffron sauce: This was my favorite dish of the evening. The crab was so crispy yet so light, and it was served over pickeld ramps (I heart ramps). I loved the sauce so much that I sopped it up with my bread. Is that allowed at a fancy restaurant?

* Braised rabbit ravioli with porcini and artichoke: This was several slices of rabbit with one rabbit ravioli. My past experience with rabbit is that it can easily be tough and pretty much flavorless. Such was not the case here. The rabbit was cooked just right -- just a teeny bit of pale pink in the center.

* Strip loin of beef with morel mushrooms, asparagus and crispy sweetbreads: The most fascinating part of this dish was that the morel mushrooms were done in a sort of custard reminiscent of crème brûlée -- complete with cracking the surface. I am not a huge beef eater, but the combination of flavors here was wonderful. (Really, the combination of all of the flavors overall impressed me. I mean, if you look at some of the things on this menu, they all seem sort of random. But combined -- holy crap, look out.) Also, the beef was excellent with the Clos Du Val 96 Napa Valley Cab we were drinking. (By the way, we sent a glass to the somm, and he thought it was a Bordeaux!)

* Cheese course: We had been looking forward to this since we stepped into the restaurant and saw the cheese cart being rolled to each table. This cart is a masterpiece. They have everything. I wanted it all, but we had to narrow it down to just six cheeses. Unfortunately, I was so enthralled that I forgot to take notes. I think the first two were goat's milk -- one from Oregon and one from France. The third was a Sally Jackson cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves. I don't remember what the fourth was but I know it was a soft, Brie-like cheese that I kept eating with macadamia nuts. And the sixth cheese was a blue cheese unlike any I've ever tasted before. It had the strength of a blue, but instead of being slightly soft, the consistency was similar to a manchego, which is one of my favorite cheeses.

(This is where the second palate cleanser arrived -- it was like a boysenberry soda in a shot glass, and you drank it with a little metal straw. Yum.)

* White and dark chocolate mousse with raspberry; tasting of frozen melon; caramel wonton: Talk about a well-planned dessert sampling. This had it all: Chocolatey, fruity and caramelly (is that a word?). I liked the caramel wonton best. It was served with a dollop of crème fraîche, and the combination of the rich, creamy caramel with the slightly sour, salty crème fraîche was fantastic.

* Mignardises: And to top it all off, we got post-desserts. Yes, gorgeous little chocolates and gelées and caramels. And even their take on a Tootsie Roll, all wrapped up in shiny red paper. By this time, we were so full we thought we would explode, so they boxed these little goodies up in a small gold-and-white box for us. That very box is sitting next to me right now, and it's all I can do to keep from devouring all of its contents.

So there we were in Healdsburg, stomachs happy. And when we left the restaurant and got into the car to return to the real world, it was 1:04 a.m. Now that's what I call an eating extravaganza.