birthday dinner

Tuesday, March 30, 2004, at 07:36AM

By Eric Richardson

So in the last post I mentioned it was Kathy's birthday yesterday, but forgot to include what we did. I think the car stuff sort of threading through my tale confused me and got me off track. Anyway...

Mid-afternoon we headed out to Manhattan Beach and hung out there for a few hours. Surprisingly the water was really nice, and we went in for a swim. I think surfreport listed the water temp at 60, which isn't bad at all for the Pacific right now.

After coming back and getting all cleaned up we got in the car and pointed ourselves toward Hollywood (though really southwest Hollywood) where I had made dinner reservations at Citrine on Melrose. Now, looking at the menu on their website you see a "prix fixe" section, with a very moderate price. Uhhh... That's not actually on their menu. Instead they have a chef's tasting menu, which is quite a bit more than that. Kathy's only going to turn 21 once, though, so we went ahead and both got that with the wine selections (I try to be fancy every once in a while). The food was excellent.

Course one was a calamari salad, which really wasn't much of a salad. It was more just calamari with some accompaniments for flavour. I won't even attempt to remember what the wine choices were. Our waiter (who was great) would tell us what each one was, but for me it was really in one ear and out the other. Course two was a soup, a little potatoe cake, and a crawfish. I had to ask our waiter how you eat a crawfish -- I knew you ate the tail but I didn't know the approved way to go about that. Then there was a little sorbet to cleanse the palate. Course three was a fish... I think Halibut? In any case very tender and very good. The plate also had artichoke hearts, and I can't remember what else. Course four was lamb, with some peas and corn. All were very well presented. For dessert we substituted from what had been on the tasting menu. I went for a Baileys souffle and Kathy had the apple tres leches.

Oh... I almost forgot the best part. Before course one there was a cucumber soup, presented in a tall shot glass (maybe double shot sized). I thought that was cool.

It was a Monday night, so the restaurant was pretty empty. They let us choose where we wanted to sit, and Kathy chose a nice corner booth. Since the place wasn't busy it felt like every dish was a bit of a group project where the kitchen was concerned. You'd see a lot of one person preparing a dish while one or two more stood and watched.

My only problem with the evening? The valet guy. He came to my door instead of Kathy's, which I thought was just kind of weird. I thought the first thing they taught you in valet school was that you always open the door for the lady first. Odd.

All in all a very good evening, though my wallet probably won't give me a return trip any time soon.