When you first walk into Citronee, you'll notice its light and airy ambiance with beautiful faux walls, contract molding and artistic lighting.

The tables are covered with linen tablecloths and butcher paper for scribbling. For a completely different ambiance, you may dine in the back room. The brick walls, artwork, pleasant music and special lighting touches add to the cozy and romantic atmosphere.

You will need some time for lunch. Their corn chipotle bread and French baguettes are baked fresh to order and take a while to be served. The bread is sliced and served warm in unique spiral baskets. For lunch, we ordered the Citronee Bistro Burger with organic tomatoes, red onions and cornichons served with homemade sesame seed buns and waffle chips. The burger melted in our mouths, the buns were soft and warm, and the waffle chips were light and crispy.

Citronee's Caesar salad is served with whole leaves, capers, parsley garlic croutons, anchovies and lots of garlic. We sampled their veggie sandwich with roasted marinated peppers, eggplant with red onion marmalade and slow-roasted tomatoes on corn chipotle foccacia bread, which was delicious.

We had dinner at Citronee on a Saturday evening and were thankful that we had reservations. Their dining room was crowded, but fortunately we were seated without waiting. For our appetizers, we ordered the steamed mussels in a white wine tomato broth, accented with coconut milk, curry and cilantro and the lobster strudel with seared picata of foie gras drizzled with lemon vinaigrette. In addition, we sampled the warm goat cheese with white truffle honey on a brioche crouton and caramelized apple served on spring mix.

Our dinner selections included the Citronee Bistro Burger and sauteed sea bass on a bed of wasabi mashed potatoes, topped with a lemon-grass sauce and fried noodles. All of our fare was artfully prepared and presented in true French style. Citronee is not the kind of place you go for a quick meal. While the service is elegant, it does take a while to order. The portions are somewhat small, but the food quality is excellent. There is no kids' menu, and the prices range from $3.95 to $15.95 for appetizers and $10.95 to $27.95 for entrees.

Although we skipped dessert, we want to mention that chef Robert Perez and his son were invited to a major pastry competition and placed in the top 10 for the entire country. It's nice to know that we have award-winning dessert and pastry chefs in our own community. The desserts we sampled for lunch were excellent.

For fine French dining, we highly recommend Citronee.

Steve and Fran Lantz of Grass Valley love to eat out. Contact them c/o The Union, 464 Sutton Way, 95945.

Citronée

Robert and Marianna Perez, proprietors

320 Broad St., Nevada City

265-5697

Open for Lunch: Mon-Fri 11:30 to 2 pm and Dinner: Mon-Fri 5:30 to 9 pm, Sat Sun 5 pm to closing