Citronnelle — Restaurant in Lancaster

My husband and I made a last minute reservation to try this place after I looked at the positive Google reviews. Unfortunately, our dining experience was not so positive like the others. Let me preface this by saying that I am a Philly native who has visited many fine dining restaurants in the city. I’ve even been to restaurants that don’t have the fine dining ambience (like this place) but their prices are expensive like a fine dining place. This restaurant lacked in all the aspects of fine dining (not sure if that is what they’re going for). The room is very small and tight. When I walked in first and gave the server our name for the reservation, she pointed us to the corner table. It was a tight squeeze! I glanced at it with an awkward hesitation, and then I looked at my husband and told him that I was going to use the restroom first. This corner table was the worst seat in the room. I wish she would’ve sat us at another 2 top considering that I’m pregnant and will need the room to get in and out and make multiple trips to the restroom. Well, this server didn’t seem to be mindful of that. After I got back to my seat (after much tweaking of the chair and table to get comfortably seated), I just looked towards the wait staff station to see when our sever would bring us our water and menus. Mind you, the place is small and there’s 2 waitresses with 4 parties. Not a busy evening for them. I also worked in the restaurant industry and bringing water and menus when your guests arrive is just service 101. You don’t keep them waiting too long. I was shocked to notice that our server didn’t notice. She was more attentive to the 4 top near us. Finally, she walked over with menus and then asked what kind of water we wanted. I asked for filtered tap. I wish she would’ve asked me this before I used the restroom if I knew she was going to wait this long to ask us another question about water options. Anyways, onto the food. My husband and I shared the crap croquettes because that was a highly recommended item from the other reviewers. Well, let me be the first to tell you, don’t order it! Save your money! It wasn’t that good. I was very disappointed to see that these were way too mushy and contained way too much cream. I first picked it up with my fork, but it completely breaks down that you have to eat it with your fingers. Again, way too much cream and you barely taste any crab. I don’t understand how people think this was good, but it was overpowering with the mayonnaise like cream and no crab taste. I felt bamboozled. For the second course, I ordered the NY strip and my husband got the lamb bolognese. Our server explained that if we wanted the soufflé, then we HAD to order it with our dinner because it takes the chef 20 minutes to make it. I thought that was even strange. I’ve never come across that in my dining experience and thought it was an unnecessary request of the guests. What if we changed our minds after we finished the dinner and wanted to cancel the soufflé? It just didn’t make sense to pressure guests into making a decision about dessert when they haven’t even had the first course yet. Now, my steak was good, but that was the only thing I liked on my plate. The steak was tender and juicy. However, it came with this crusted potato thing that tasted really strange. It also came with a cup of creamed spinach which was very bland and lacking in any culinary taste. It needed salt very badly and didn’t have much cream. I was shocked by the poor texture and lack of taste in the sides. My husband’s dish was good, but after some time of eating it, he said he doesn’t think he’s a fan of bolognese. He said it’s something that he could make himself, so I don’t think he was any more impressed with his dish. The pasta noodles had a nice texture to it though and the eggplant was good. That’s about it. Finally, the soufflé. It was nothing special in taste or texture. There wasn’t anything in it that made me go “wow, that’s really good”. Overall, a poor experience and such lack of attentiveness from our server. We...

Rude.

Initially, when I sent an email to change my reservation the owner was very gracious. Unfortunatel, the young woman who is waiting on us was less so. It is rude to tell your customers, once you've told them that you've run out of french fries, after putting down the menus and not mentioning the items that you were missing, to suggest that they go to McDonald's if they want fries.

It's also very strange for a Modern French bistro restaurant to run out of bread at 7:30 in the evening. Yes, it is odd that they served some sort of version of focaccia instead of a proper baguettes but maybe that's all part of the modern twist? However, every one of us has access to even Frozen baguettes from any chain grocery store that we can reheat when we run out of bread for ourselves and in a pinch, for our customers. The waitress seem to have an attitude when she delivered that news as well.

It is the hospitality business even in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and she did not seem very hospitable.

As far as the food went, the appetizers were fine. We especially enjoyed the croquettes and the carpaccio.

I found the duck and fig bisteeya to the incredibly dense and lacking in duck. There was a lot of fig. Not an interesting dish. Although my co diner enjoyed his so it is a case of to each his own.

The fish of the day was good and so was the lamb.

The complete failure was the dessert. The souffles, which we ordered with our mains tasted like scrambled eggs with sugar and flavorings in them. They were curdled. They were not souffles and the creme anglaise was the consistency of milk not properly made creme anglaise.

Two good things about this restaurant are:

One, that it's fairly quiet.

It's a very plain room ambiance-wise, but you can't hear your fellow diners, which is nice.

Two, the corkage fee is very low.

Another snide response from our waitress was regarding whether or not they had anything that was non-alcoholic to drink. She said only coffee or tea. I found out later there was a ginger beer on the menu that she didn't think I needed to know about.

It seems strange with the plethora of non-alcoholic drinks and mocktails available at most restaurants these days that this place would not have a...

The server was very friendly and kind, providing a warm and welcoming atmosphere. Although she did check-in with us regarding our appetizer, she was too preoccupied to check-in regarding our entree, due to her being the only staff in the dining area catering to 4 different tables; understandable but didn't leave us the opportunity to address our issues with the entree (which will be highlighted below) until we paid for our bill and came across someone else by happenstance. The aesthetics were elegant and on the dimmer side, especially if you're seating at the corner tables away from the light, we recommend sitting closer to the light or by the entrance if there's still light out. We really loved the crab croquettes appetizer, which had a perfectly crispy exterior that complimented perfectly with the moist interior mixture of potato and crab that paired very well with the aioli. The crispy potato that accompanied the NY strip was perfectly balanced as well, with the crispiest exterior that I ever had with a potato dish!

Unfortunately that was the highlight to the entire dish, for the strip was extremely lean without any fat or marbling to help balance out the leanness of the steak (which is evident in the attached photos below). Usually a NY strip, even if grass fed, would still have a strip of fat on the outer layer, but ours did not have any at all, which you can see from all slices we've made. We weren't hoping for ribeye-quality fats at all, but just one that wasn't completely lean. The creamed spinach was also quite bitter and watery, which definitely diluted its creaminess unfortunately; you can see from the photo the wateriness in the creamed spinach where the cream began separating. We love their menu and the restaurant's elegant vibe, as well as how beautifully the food was presented, but unfortunately we were left disappointed by our main entree. I highly recommend their crab croquettes so please give that a try if you can, I promise you won't regret it!

Thank you for reading and...