A Salt-of-the-Earth Town That Sparkles

14.11.2023 - 11:02 / nytimes.com

After he closed Cyrus, the Healdsburg, Calif., restaurant for which he’d earned two Michelin stars, in 2012, it took the chef Douglas Keane a decade to scout the dream locale for his new restaurant.

Mr. Keane finally landed last year at a former prune-packing plant overlooking vineyards where the Russian River snakes through the Alexander Valley. Those vineyards are not in Healdsburg, Sonoma County’s unofficial gastronomic headquarters, but eight miles north in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Geyserville.

“Geyserville is real, rural wine country: Farmers are out at 5 a.m.,” said the 52-year-old chef on what drew him to the town. “Everyone knows each other’s name; there is a yearly tractor parade.” The new version of Cyrus is putting Geyserville on the itineraries of more travelers, who are enjoying the town’s buzzy bar and stylish eateries, the home goods shop that feels like a beefed-up flea market, and intimate, tucked-into-the-landscape wineries.

The whole town may be just two blocks of Wild West-looking storefronts, but its charms take an entire weekend to uncover. Here, some of the highlights.

In Japan, there is no culinary experience held in higher regard than kaiseki, the formal, multicourse meal that showcases seasonality with dishes served elegantly but without pretense. At Cyrus, Mr. Keane, who has visited Japan many times, presents his version of kaiseki through a California lens, a paean to local agriculture (though a few ingredients come from far-flung spots). The presentation wows with a whisper.

The meal unfolds in various locations throughout Cyrus’s 8,000 square feet. It kicks off with champagne and snacks that play on different aspects of taste: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. Guests (there are four seatings of 12 diners four evenings a week) gather in the leather-accented lounge or outside among the olive trees, where the Mayacamas Mountains and surrounding vineyards shimmer on the surface of the reflecting pool.

For the next courses, the group proceeds to a moodily lit area adjacent to the open kitchen, where diners are invited to roam the kitchen as courses like sake-steamed abalone with shio koji corn consommé are being prepped. While diners ogling chefs in a gastronomic kitchen is not new, a midservice invitation to interact with them is.

More substantial savory dishes are served in the dining room, where floor-to-ceiling windows give the landscape center stage. Among the dishes: a seared scallop bathed in matsutake-mushroom-spiked dashi; a fillet of beef, cooked sous-vide and then plancha-searedhoney-glazed goat’s milk shokupan bread alongside custard blooming with puffed barley and nasturtium and mustard flowers. The meal culminates in a cocoon-like room with a bite of