INDIAN RIVER SHORES — Except for residents of John’s Island, it’s been quite some time since there was a restaurant open in the evening in Indian River Shores. But in mid-March, the new Citron Bistro began serving dinner six nights a week in the Village Shops.
The restaurant is owned by the entrepreneurs redoing the Village Shops, Jay McLaughlin and wife Joan, who see Citron Bistro – which earlier this season quickly built a following for breakfast and lunch – as the centerpiece of their effort to develop an upscale shopping destination.
Now, Citron also is open for dinner.
The chef at Citron is Tibor Andrejszky, who came to the U.S. from Hungary two decades ago and has worked his way up in Vero restaurant kitchens that include those of The Moorings, the French Quarter, the Black Pearl, and Ynot.
Headline news: For a casual dinner, the Citron Bistro seems poised to fill for north barrier island residents the role a good neighborhood restaurant fills on Manhattan’s Upper East Side (and by the way, the McLaughlins own such a restaurant, Island, which is a local favorite only steps from their Madison Avenue clothing store).
Look & Feel: The Citron Bistro is not a white-tablecloth restaurant. As its name suggests, it has a bistro feel, with woven green place mats on butcher block tables. Under the wood beamed ceiling, the green banquettes that line two walls harmonize nicely with wooden chairs, providing seating for about 32 inside. On pleasant evenings, about the same number can dine outside under large blue umbrellas.
Food: On a visit last week, my husband and I sampled two starters, two entrées, and a dessert. I started with a side house salad ($4.50) consisting of mesclun greens, cherry tomatoes, Kalamata olives, shaved red onions, shaved parmesan cheese with a basil-balsamic vinaigrette.
Very nice.
But my husband was the first-course winner with Citron’s French onion soup ($7.50), an excellent rendition of this classic bistro dish.
Then for entrées, I ordered the shrimp & grits ($22) and my husband had the crab cakes ($24).
The shrimp & grits was superb, jumbo shrimp perfectly sautéed with mushrooms and spinach, and served over scrumptious creamy cheese grits.
The crab cakes, our server confided, are the only dish from a recipe imported from the McLaughlins’ Manhattan restaurant. They are pan seared, served with a mango salsa and cilantro- avocado emulsion, with rice pilaf and on this evening accompanied by asparagus and carrots.
My husband thought the crab cakes ranked right up there with the great ones served at the Ocean Grill.
For dessert, we shared one of Citron’s house-made temptations – a blueberry bread pudding with crème anglaise ($6.50). Delicious.
Drink: The Citron Bistro offers a small but adequate selection of beers and wines, with bottles of wine mostly priced in the $30s.
Service: On the night we visited, the restaurant was about three-quarters full when we arrived at 7 p.m.
Considering that the staff at that point had only been serving dinners for about a week, we thought everything went amazingly smoothly, and our server was very attentive.
Prices: Prices for entrées run mostly in the $20s, with the pan-seared New York strip steak topping the menu at $30 and the Citron burger the least costly at $15 (we saw a couple of these pass our table, and they looked mighty good).
With an appetizer, entrée and a modest bottle of wine, a party of two should be able to dine at the Citron Bistro for about $100.
Initial impressions: While we dined inside to sample the experience in what is a quite small restaurant, Citron was not at all noisy – and our guess is dining alfresco here will be a very pleasant experience in the spring months ahead.
Overall, the atmosphere is clubby, the food prepared correctly, and Citron gives northern barrier island residents a good neighborhood restaurant.
But come on the early side. The last seating is at 8 p.m., and the restaurant’s agreement with the town of Indian River Shores is that everyone will be out and on their way home by 9:30.
I welcome your comments, and encourage you to send feedback to me at tina@verobeach32963.com.
The reviewer is a beachside resident who dines anonymously at restaurants at the expense of Vero Beach 32963.
