Well here it is. I’ve been mulling it over and I think the best way to tackle this particular “review” is to just go head to head. Cyrus for my birthday. No-holds-barred home cooking Chez the Eloquent One (EO) for New Year’s. Here’s the skinny on the contestants . . .

Birthday/Christmas Dinner at Cyrus
For those of you who have been to Cyrus, you know. For those of you who haven’t, picture this: an ambiance that’s soothing and warm, simple and luxe. Where from the moment you enter you feel an anticipation—like you’re setting out on a journey—and the whole staff couldn’t be more thrilled to be your guide. Where a line of waiters brings out dish after dish in which the flavors and textures seem almost choreographed the way they unfold in your mouth. And when you bubble over with excitement, the staff is right there with you with smiles that say, “I know, isn’t that just the coolest thing?” This particular night—a special birthday/Christmas treat—we opted for the seven-course Chef’s menu.

New Years at the Eloquent One’s Home
For those of you who have been to the EO’s home, you know. For those of you who haven’t, picture this: an ambiance that is warm and welcoming, like being wrapped up in a cashmere blankie by the fire. There’s always a feeling that you’ll be surrounded by those you love while being enfolded by the scents and sights and bites of delicious food. Since it was a special night, we each made special dishes . . . seven courses to be exact. We’d concocted our menu around the “seven deadly sins” of food (well not really deadly, but downright decadent yes) — oysters, champagne, caviar, foie gras, truffles, lobster and chocolate.

Let the games begin:

First Course — Caviar

Cyrus: California Select and American Paddlefish Caviar with Accompaniments. Cyrus has the most amazing champagne cart that Nick Peyton rolls around and presents so enticingly that you just can’t resist. Then he ever-so-subtly drops the caviar menu in front of you. As if you had any reserve left after the champagne. We enjoyed two domestic caviars (I’d written an article on domestic caviar recently and was excited to try some) with potato cakes, creme fraiche and chopped egg. Oh my. The California Select was the favorite of the two, with such a complex flavor and creamy texture that even my mom and dad (“no, we really don’t like caviar”) ended up sopping up the last little bits.

Wine Pairing: Egly Ouriet “Brut Rosé - Grand Cru”, Ambonnay, France (yeasty, complex, refined, divine with the caviar)

Chez EO: Caviar Three Ways. Honore, EO’s wife, was in charge of this course and I have to say it gave Cyrus a run for its money. She too served domestic caviar, but in three different presentations: on buckwheat blinis with creme fraiche, on a deviled quail egg, and on a homemade potato chip with Maldon sea salt. I loved how each backdrop had a subtle influence on the caviar itself.

Wine Pairing: Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Rosé (one of our favorite “budget” Brut Rosé champagnes) / Ice Cold Vodka (not sure what brand . . . it just showed up in the most beautiful little shot glasses that turned out to be Honore’s Grandmother’s glasses)

Second Course — Shellfish

Cyrus: Nantucket Bay Scallop Ceviche with Pickled Daikon and Sweet Potato. Honestly, what a combo, eh? But my Lord, the flavors in this dish were like a silk sari unfolding in the breeze. Delicate yet brilliant.

Wine Pairing: Muscat, Zind Humbrecht “Grand Cru Goldert”, Alsace, France 2005 / Riesling, Brundlmayer, “Zobinger Heiligenstein”, Kamptal, Austria 2004

Chez EO: Local Oysters on the Half Shell (procured from the coast and shucked by EO). How can you beat this? I happened to be carrying a very tired little darling at this point so I perfected the one-handed dipping of the shell ever-so-carefully into the mignonette and then up up up to mouth and tilt and down all in one quick swoop . . . out of sheer necessity of course. Eaten outside on a crisp, icy night with lanterns and firelight. Exquisite.

Wine Pairing: Ditto above.

Course Three — Foie Gras

Cyrus: Salt Cured Foie Gras Torchon with Quince Butter and Pomegranate. This was one of those obscenely large servings of foie gras that you look at and go, “oh no, I couldn’t.” And then 27 groans and 33 swoons later, you open your eyes, glance down at your plate and realize it’s gone. It was, literally, as buttery as butter, but with a more savory flavor than most foie gras I’ve had—I’d assume both from the salt curing and the itsy crystals of gorgeous sea salt placed, I swear, as strategically as if they were set there with tweezers. The quince butter was somewhat like a marmalade and was a perfect accompaniment. Not cloyingly sweet and even a bit tart. One of the best—if not the best—foie gras I’ve ever had.

Wine Pairing: Riesling Ausles, Eitelsbacher Karthauserhofberg, Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany 1990 / Riesling Spatlese, Schafer-Frohlich “Monzinger Halenberg”, Nahe, Germany, 2005

Chez EO: Foie Gras Goes to the Islands. Joann had a vision for this one. Seared foie gras (so gutsy . . . think searing butter) with pan-seared tropical fruits and a quick reduction sauce. It was a beautiful execution of the other approach to foie gras. Whereas torchons are cool and uniformly silky smooth, seared foie gras is like the most feather-light cream suspended in a crisp, caramely crust. The seared pineapples were an especially gorgeous addition. As were the paper cocktail umbrellas ;-).

Wine Pairing: Sauternes . . . working on procuring vintage and producer . . .

Course Four — Lobster

Cyrus: Langoustine with Chorizo and Clams. I love dishes like this. It was obviously inspired by a Portuguese stew, but kicked up about 50 octaves so that each element was fine-tuned to hit a particular note. It was served in a chorizo broth that I’d be very content slurping daily for the rest of my life.

(Wine Pairing): Chassagne-Montrachet, Guy Amiot Premier Cru Les Caillerets, France 2005 / Manzanilla Sherry “La Guita”, Jerez, Spain

Chez EO: Lobster Pot Pies. Honore was in charge of this one and it was so good that I literally took her leftovers right from under her nose. Embarrassing . . . yes. Good . . . good God yes. She had poached the lobster in butter and made a luscious sauce out of lobster stock and cream and all kids of other goodies. Then she mixed the lobster chunks (big, succulent chunks) with the sauce, ladled it all into ramekins, covered it with puff pastry rounds and baked. Outstanding. Funny that it was another approach that took a homey dish and elevated it to new levels.

Wine Pairing: 2002 Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay (dubbed “The Grange” of Chardonnay)

Course Five — Truffles

Cyrus: Pumpkin Tagliarini with Sugar Pie Coulis, Poached Egg with Fresh White Truffles. This was outstanding. I’m really getting into roasted squash and pumpkin this season and am continually amazed by how complex the resulting flavors are. This dish took that concept and ran around the world with it. The tagliarini was so tender it almost melted into the coulis—which had a lovely burnt-caramel-brown butter-esque flavor to it. The poached egg added even more depth, and then the tissue-paper thin shavings of white truffles on top. I mean, come on. The steamy cream and butter and egg in the pasta tickled the little truffle fairies out of their slumber so they’d do their delicious little dance for us in our noses and on our tongues and taste buds and palettes and everywhere in between. Ethereal.

Wine Pairing: Nuits-St-Georges, Robert Chevillon Premier Cru Pruliers, France 2004 / Brunello di Montalcino, Poggio Basso, Tuscany, Italy 2001

Chez EO: This was our dish and we opted to make homemade tagliarini (looking at these menus side-by-side I’m realizing—duh—how influenced I was by our Cyrus gig) with farm-fresh eggs that had been perfumed by fresh truffles, tossed in a classic Piedmontese fontina sauce enriched by eggs which, again, had been closed up with a white truffle for some time. In the end, we couldn’t find a fresh white truffle (tough year to find them), but we did end up with several gorgeous black truffles and a preserved white truffle. So rather than focus on the white truffle element (which is more about the aroma being carried by heat and fat . . . the reason you want to shave white truffle as thinly as possible), I improvised to focus more on the black element (which is more about depth of flavor and needs to be cooked or steeped in a sauce rather than used raw). We made our egg pasta dough, rolled it out on our pasta board with the matarello (a long rolling pin used for pasta that we learned to use in Italy) and then cut it on our chitarra (another pasta gizmo—this one a box strung with strings like a guitar, chitarra in Italian). For the sauce, I grated the black truffles into the cream and let it all steep for quite some time before whisking in the cheese and egg.

Wine Pairing: 2004 Ronchi Barbaresco

Course Six — Beef (Cyrus alone . . . since one of our seven “courses” was champagne)

Cyrus: Beef Wellington, Mascarpone Creamed Spinach and Candy Cap, Bordelaise. This was what a beef wellington and all the classic steak house accompaniments should be taken to the edge of the stratosphere. I know I’ve said that a lot about this meal. But darn it, it’s true. This beef—Wagyu beef of the highest grade—was so buttery and tender I literally cut it with my fork. With very little physical effort on my part. Spinach with mascarpone, brilliant. Candy cap mushrooms . . . I didn’t think I’d ever find a mushroom that would rival porcinis and truffles in my book but alas, here it is.

Wine Pairing: Syrah, Pax “Griffin’s Lair”, Sonoma Coast 2005 / Cabernet Sauvignon, Chateau Montelena “The Montelena Estate”, Napa Valley 2000

Course Seven — Dessert

Cyrus: Green Cardamom Ice Cream with Blood Orange Granite and Grapefruit Moscato, and Gingerbread Souffle with Eggnog Anglaise. I just kept swapping back and forth between these two. Ice cream, granite being soothing and refreshing. Gingerbread souffle with eggnog anglaise being warm and rich and comforting.

Wine Pairing: Scheurebe Spatlese, Muller Catoir “Haardter Mandelring”, Pfalz, Germany 2004 / Sauternes, Chateau d’Yquem, Bordeaux, France 1997 / Bonnezeau, Rene Renou, Loire Valley 1999

Chez EO: The Seven Virtues Chocolate Dessert. Our dear friend Jann, the queen of desserts, out did everyone on this one — I think I can even safely say she out did Cyrus. To counteract all our devilish delights during the meal, Jann concocted seven miniature chocolate treats, each with a tiny, virtuous banner beneath it. There were little chocolate muffins of hope, black and white truffles (the chocolate kind) of justice, white chocolate ice cream bowls of love, chocolatinis of temperance and more. How can you not feel virtuous about eating virtues?

Wine Pairing: The Chocolatini

Tough showdown. Two stellar meals. Happy new year.

PS — The wines are in and I have to add a note about the Cyrus pairings. We did two types of wine pairings — one “regular” and one “Grand Tasting”, which is why there are two wines listed for each. In doing so I made a discovery. I’m a girl with simple tastes (I say jokingly . . . as if you can call any dinner and wine pairing at Cyrus simple). The last time Christopher and I were at Cyrus, we had the “regular pairing” and were delighted by the creativity inherent in the selections: sakes with stories you wouldn’t believe, odd producers from around the world always with a tale to be told. This evening’s “regular” tasting was very much along the same lines. The Grand Tasting was about the big names and the cult wines, which is all fine and good. But I found that I preferred the wines that, although perhaps more humble choices, just clicked in a unique way with the dish. The Langoustine course was a perfect example. I preferred the Sherry over the Chassagne-Montrachet (gasp), because it seemed to me to delve through the flavors and connect to the essence of the dish as opposed to gild the top in a tap dance all its own.