CityZen Birthday Dinner!

For my birthday, my wonderful, thoughtful, thankfully also food-loving boyfriend Pat took me to CityZen in the Mandarin Oriental downtown. Our meal was Very Good, but not one of my All Time Favorites. I was not-so-secretly expecting the latter, given Sietsema's affinity for the CZ and others' reviews, but we certainly were not disappointed by the food. It just didn't blow my mind.

As such, I will describe the meal in a Very Good, but not one of my All Time Favorite forms of poetry, the haiku (personally, I'm a sucker for rhyming couplets). I've also included some editorial comments in brackets following each verse. (Bear with me...it was a tasting menu.)

Oyster canape,
dressed with bloody mary foam,
cucumber gelee

[Pat said, "I never knew celery could be so flavorful!" And he loves celery. This was good (the oyster was perfect and plump), but I thought it was a bit of a cop out for the amuse.]

Cooked matsutakis,
pumpkin, hom'ny, microgreens,
dressed, sweet and tangy

[Honestly, this would have been fantastic without the feature of the salad, the mushrooms. They were chewy and didn't seem to fit with the rest of the dish. The crispy hominy crumbles were fun, though, and the dressing was delectable.]

Surgeon risotto,
sliced chestnuts, sans white truffles--
way too much butter

[Eh. Too buttery and fishy for my taste. Maybe it would have been better with the $40 white truffle supplemental...(HA)]

Hunk of speck-wrapped quail,
seared foie and maybe a veg?
Heavenly fall bites

[Yum-O. And I think I'm starting to love foie...]

Lobster tail and claw,
creamy, buttery sauce, on
sunchoke pedestal

[Perfectly cooked. A LOT of lobster. And I'm a sucker for Jerusalem artichokes!!!]

Venison, med-rare,
huckleberry sauce, and a
fennel financier

[We did not get this dish at all. The venison was cooked perfectly, but it didn't really work with the huckleberry sauce. And neither worked with the financier, which, although tasty, was sweet enough to be dessert and tasted nothing of fennel.]

Palate cleansing time:
A tiny quinule--of oats
and oatmeal ice cream

[Very refreshing and a nice change of pace (not to mention more seasonally appropriate) from the typical citrus fruit.]

Vanilla ice cream,
apricot napoleon,
and cinnamon twille

[Not bad. The ice cream was super creamy and rich and yummy. Probably gelato, actually...]

Fruit gelees, truffles,
fig macaroons, twee cupcake:
Happy Birthday, me!

[I consider myself a cupcake connoisseur, and I have to say this was one of the better ones I have had. I was sad it wasn't bigger. The macaroons were perfect. The other two I didn't much care for.]


Besides the food itself, impressions of CityZen:
Pros
- They really went out of their way to make me feel special on my birthday. I got a card signed by apparently my new friends on the CZ staff, and Pat and I each received a muscato d'asti-style dessert wine to go with our napoleons. They also wrote "Happy Birthday" in chocolate on the final plate of sweet bites.
- The sommelier is very good. He treats you like you're not an idiot, and has an extensive vocabulary for describing wines. He also did not recommend the most expensive wine on the menu.
- The service was spot on, with the exception that the leftover Parker House rolls we requested doggie-bagged never actually made it back to us. When we started getting painfully full around the third course they let us take a breather before continuing our gluttony.

Cons
- It's very confusing when you walk in where the hostess stand is. This is a minor point, but we did not see one couple walk in un-perplexed.
- The seat against the wall (bench-style, where the girl would usually sit) was VERY, VERY uncomfortable. My lower back was screaming my the end of the night.

Thanks for a very special birthday, P!
(portions x-posted to yelp.com)