Review : The Cygnus 27

Any excuse for me to try a new fine dining restaurant is always exciting. So the Sous Chef and I decided to have our Valentine's Dinner at The Cygnus 27, which is located in the Amway Grand Plaza hotel in Grand Rapids. Because he actually had to work on Valentine's, and a holiday is never a good day to try a new dining experience, we went the following weekend.

One of the main draws of The Cygnus is that it's on the 27th floor of the hotel, one of the highest floors in the city. The views are fantastic, and even a bit disorientating. It's such a unique view of a city that I'm very familiar with. Just about every seat in the house has a nice view with dinner.
I loved the atmosphere of the restaurant as well. It's very hip and chic. It still retains an upscale flair, but is easily a hot spot for dinner and drinks with friends.

Another thing I like about this restaurant, is it's utilization of OpenTable.com. I love how easy this website is to use, and I wish more restaurants in the West Michigan area would use it. It's a serious draw for people who love to dine.

We made our reservations on OpenTable.com for 9:00pm. (The only reservation left for that Saturday.) We didn't mind the late hour because we could take our time getting ready and enjoying the rest of our Saturday without having to rush to dinner.

We got there a bit early, and enjoyed views from the lounge area while we waited for our table. We didn't have to wait long, and we were soon seated. We dove into the menu excitedly discussing what we would order. I'm always challenged by all the things I want to order and try vs. how much I can actually eat. I fill up very quickly on a small amount of food, so I always am very careful not to eat much before dining out at places like this.

We ordered drinks, which were very well mixed, and placed an order for our appetizer. We decided to go with the Raclette Cheese II. It was Leelanau Cheese Company Raclette in an herb batter and slowly fried, served with remoulade sauce. And it was divine.

You can never go wrong with fried cheese. Raclette is a semi-firm, salted cow's milk cheese. It was very savory. The herb batter was crispy, flavorful, and was not greasy at all. The remoulade (similar to tartar sauce) was freshly made and very tasty. It had thinly slice pieces of dilled green beans and other spices that complemented the cheese perfectly.

Because I knew that I could not eat an entire salad with all of the other food I was expecting to order, we decided to split the grilled romaine salad. So here was my half:

The grilled romaine salad featured dried heirloom tomatoes, poppy seed crusted goat cheese, yogurt-chive dressing, and balsamic vinaigrette. It was a perfect balance of fresh flavors. It made me miss summer. Grilling the romaine released it's oils and flavors in a way I have never tasted. The dried heirloom tomato was a treat in itself; reduced and concentrated flavor in a wafer slice. The goat cheese was creamy and rich, and was a perfect complement to the romaine and vinaigrette. It was a generous slice, and it would have been nice to have some bread or crackers to eat the remainder with.

That was one odd thing about our dining experience. We never got any bread. We had bread plates and butter knives, but never bread. Other tables got bread. Why not us? Was it because we ordered an appetizer and a salad? Or was it merely an oversight? It was not enough to ruin our delightful evening, but it was puzzling.

They did serve us a nice intermezzo of fried polenta in a mushroom sauce. I was so excited to try it I didn't take a photo! It was a very good texture and the mushroom sauce was very buttery and yummy.

On to the entree! I ordered the Balinese Duck. It was duck breast rubbed with a mixture of macademia nuts, tumeric, and cilantro served with a root vegetable mash and fruit salsa.

The last time I had duck, it was at Bistro on the Boulevard. I had gotten the duck confit, so it wasn't very fatty since the fat was melted. This time, it was roasted, so there was quite a bit of fat under the skin and a fatty texture in the meat. It was done to an exquisite temperature, and beautiful color, but a little fattier than I like in my meat. The root vegetable mash was slightly sweet and very full of flavor. I could've eaten all of it if I wasn't so full. The fruit salsa had sweet and savory elements as well. Pineapple and garlic is a good combination.

For dessert we ordered "Lava". It was a fudge cake wrapped in phyllo and topped with melting whipped cream that spilled over the sides like lava. The whole thing was topped with 18K gold leaf.

Sorry, these pictures are so orange because of the low lighting in the restaurant. This dessert was really good, but had perhaps a bit too much phyllo dough layers. It was fun to tear apart and to eat the gold leaf. By this time we were pleasantly full and getting sleepy.

Out came our check for the evening with a lovely surprise: chocolate fondue. Perfect squares of moist pound cake and fresh strawberries. The chocolate was a high quality dark chocolate that was so perfect, I used the bare toothpick to scoop chocolate directly into my mouth (classy, I know).

All in all, we had a wonderful evening together. I would definitely recommend The Cygnus 27 to friends, and eat there again. I give this chic restaurant 4.5 stars, out of 5!

★★★★½

Chocolate Crepes with Raspberries

I decided to try something different this Valentine's Day and made a chocolate crepe breakfast for the Sous Chef. I had seen the recipe featured on BrightIdeas.com. I used the recipe posted on there as a jumping off point.

For the Crepes:

• 1½ cups flour
• ½ cup cocoa powder
• 6 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 2¼ cups lowfat milk
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 2 large eggs
• ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• Vegetable oil as needed

1. Combine flour, cocoa powder, sugar and salt.
2. In another bowl, 2 cups of milk, butter, eggs and vanilla until blended.
3. Combine butter and flour mixtures, whisking until smooth. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
4. Cook crepes: Before cooking, whisk remaining ¼ cup of milk into crepe batter. Lightly brush skillet with oil and heat over medium high heat. Once pan is hot, remove from heat, pour in ¼ -cup of batter and swirl pan around allowing batter to evenly coat bottom. Return pan to heat and cook for 40 seconds. Flip crepe over and continue to cook an additional 20 seconds. Repeat process with remaining batter, stacking crepes. Set aside.

NOTE: This recipe makes A LOT of crepes! Probably enough for four or more people, so cut accordingly. Also, stacking your crepes in a 150ºF oven will keep them nice and fresh until you're ready to garnish and serve.

So I was getting excited as I assembled the crepe batter into bowls, loving the person who wrote the recipe for separating their wet and dry ingredients. I put it in the refrigerator to chill out for an hour and then started getting everything else ready.

When I was finally ready to actually start cooking the crepes, it was then I had a "what did I get myself into?" moment. I'm NOT experienced with crepes. I know the theory, but don't have the practice. My girlfriends and I had a crepe party last summer and I learned quickly that I am not good with crepes. Those devilishly sticky disks of goodness are hard to flip. But then I took a deep breath and decided there's no hurt in trying.

The key to crepe making is getting your pan heated through. Then you drop the batter in and take the pan off the heat and swirl the batter around the edges, coating the bottom of the pan. (As demonstrated by my friend Nicole below.)

Crepes are supposed to be thin, so a little bit of batter is the way to go. By the time you evenly coat the bottom of the pan with the batter, it should already be mostly cooked. Set it back on the burner for a few seconds until the top is almost a matte finish. Then the hard part...the flip. These thin little guys are amazingly sticky. I had the best luck propping the edges up with a rubber scraper, and then tilting the pan while getting my spatula under the crepe. This is the part that will take the most practice. After a few clumps of crepe disasters, I finally got the hang of it down.

For the filling:

• 2 cups part skim ricotta cheese
• 1½ cups raspberries
• ¼ cup sugar
• ¼ cup toasted almonds
• Zest on orange

1. Combine ricotta cheese with raspberries, sugar and orange zest.
2. Spread crepes with filling to within ½-inch of the edge. Fold crepes into quarters and place two on each serving plate.

Here is where I got off the recipe train. I should have gotten off the track all together. I did not use almonds or orange zest. I did use the ricotta. Right out of the refrigerator. These little crepes are no where near thick enough to heat up that ricotta, so if you don't like eating cold crepes, use room-temperature ricotta. It was not very appetizing. (You can also use frozen raspberries, just make sure they're thawed.)
I personally feel like ricotta is not the right filling choice here. A cream cheese- or yogurt-based filling would be much better served with the raspberries and orange zest. I don't really care for ricotta, but even the Sous Chef agreed that it wasn't quite the right combo. Bleh!

Chocolate sauce:

• ½ cup chopped Dove Dark Chocolate
• ¼ cup lowfat milk
• ½ cup raspberries
• 1/3 cup Raspberry Almond M&M’S® Brand Premium Chocolate Candies

1. Before serving, melt chocolate and milk together.
2. Drizzle sauce over crepes, garnish with raspberries and Raspberry Almond M&M’S Premiums.

I departed from this recipe a bit too. I used chocolate chips instead of Dove, because they are just as good for this application in my opinion, and I didn't want richness overkill. I also did not us any M&Ms. The idea of hard shell candy on smooth melty chocolate crepes did not appeal to me, although I'm sure they taste yummy by themselves.

All in all I have to say this recipe is definitely good for the crepes. They are chocolaty, and maybe a bit rich. Definitely filling. As for the filling, make your own! Come up with new creative applications for these. They would probably be fantastic with bananas in the middle. I think they were good for a special V-Day breakfast, and with a few slight modifications, they are something I'll make again.