Citizen Smith

Citizen Smith is a rather trendy restaurant with a classy, gothic vibe. The interior is filled with dark woods, wrought iron details, leather booths accented with pony-hair wall coverings, chandeliers, mirrors, artistic print screen light lamp shades, etc. - it's quite a visual extravaganza, yet somehow seems to work all together. The two main focal points appear to be the impressive and well-stocked bar and the glass back wall which opens into a lovely patio.

I had been here when it first opened, and liked the general vibe but was a bit turned off by the crazy trendy crowds and the "too cool for school" attitude conveyed by the servers. They specialized in comfort food, and that hasn't changed. It's been a few years and I decided to give it another try for lunch. (I suspected the hype had passed and we could enjoy the food and the space without the crowds and attitude, and I was right.) :)

We were immediately greeted when we entered - it had just opened for lunch so there were no other patrons. We chose to sit in one of the cozy booths. They seem to be reorganizing their menu/wine list/staff so there were some hiccups in service (but no attitude). The sommelier was lovely and let me taste between a couple of choices to decide. I settled on his recommendation (Conumdrum), a pleasant white table wine with a lovely floral bouquet, not too sweet. Our group had the following:

house salad - simple, fresh, mesculun greens with plump sweet tomatoes and balsamic vinaigrette

fried chicken skewers - 4 large chicken tenders - very juicy, but a bit large - good for sharing

jalapeno mac & cheese - good; nice baked bread crumb topping. perhaps i like things too spicy, but i wished it were a little spicier.

chinese chicken salad - my friend liked it, but i didn't try it. looked good...

chopped cobb salad - again my friend liked it, but i wasn't that tempted. i only ordered my house salad because i felt guilty about eating the fried chicken and mac&cheese....

Overall we enjoyed it and would definitely come back to try for dinner. They have very interesting cocktails on the menu so i'm sure it'll be a fun experiment. Service does need to get more polished (not sure why, but our server seemed really nervous ... maybe he was new on the job...)

Random note - this place was near a sports bar called "big wangs" - when i saw it i knew i had to check it out. (my last name is wang). :)