Flashy Grille Adheres to the Bold Standard : Unfortunately, not everything at Citrus City works.

Glassell Street, just north of the traffic circle in downtown Orange, is a historic, tree-lined neighborhood of antique shops and mom-and-pop stores. It’s the sort of place that could pass for a “Leave It to Beaver” set.

It’s also the kind of place where a postmodern restaurant really stands out. Around here, it’s pretty hard to ignore an eatery where the ceiling is a maze of exposed ducts and the color scheme is best described as lime green, Creamsicle orange and soft purple.

So you won’t have any trouble picking out Citrus City Grille--a most attractive place blessed with artful touches such as subtly hued Art Deco posters (in French, no less), art nouveau lamps and a retro zinc-topped bar. The tables have white linen tablecloths, though they’re covered by butcher paper.

Citrus City Grille’s kitchen (a display kitchen, of course) is unafraid, and not always wisely, to test the limits of our tolerance for California cuisine. Chef Ryan Adams--he’s the twentysomething fellow with the baseball cap on backward--is talented, but he’s at his best when he plays it straight.

I’m all for youthful creativity, but the line must be drawn somewhere--such as with the ono that was a recent fish special. The menu proposed it as “tender ono wrapped in mango and placed atop vanilla bean rice surrounded by a chile banana cream sauce and garnished with taro chip and chive oil.”

Oh, no. I’d sooner order rack of cloned lamb.

But the chef more than adequately proves his mettle with his meatloaf, which is the best I have tasted in Southern California. It’s a thick slice of a sort of pork-and-beef pa^te, moist and tender and wonderfully rustic, served with whipped potatoes laced with Roquefort cheese.

He has other moments. He transforms Chilean sea bass, a relatively uninspiring fish, into a real palate-pleaser by baking it in a light lemon ginger sauce and serving it on fluffy couscous. There is a respectable (if slightly stiff) risotto, flavorful with shrimp, chicken, mushrooms, peas and shaved Parmesan. I’m also a fan of the sunny salad he calls garden trio: fresh slices of yellow and red tomatoes and squeaky-fresh bufala mozzarella in a colorful and pungent beet vinaigrette.

It’s a pity so many other dishes fall short of this standard.

Wild mushroom polenta, an appetizer, has potential because the sauteed spinach, the creme frai^che and the polenta itself are delicious, but the dish is thrown out of balance by an overwhelming, heavily reduced meat glaze. And those wild mushrooms are doled out pretty stingily.

Fried calamari rings, thickly breaded in chunky Japanese panko bread crumbs, come with a sweet apricot aioli that’s downright strange. Firecracker spring rolls aren’t bad--they’re nicely fried vegetarian eggrolls studded with black sesame seeds--but the word “firecracker” implies they are spicy, which they are not.

The crab cakes, on the other hand, have a tolerable amount of heat. Adams arranges these spicy golden discs of lump crab meat between herbed medallions of goat cheese and dresses the whole shebang with a roasted red and yellow pepper coulis.

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Perhaps the most disappointing dish on the menu is citrus linguine. The idea of a lemon-pepper linguine topped with artichokes, olives, roasted peppers and pecorino cheese is inviting, but what you get here tastes like something thrown together at the deli counter of an upscale supermarket--assembled at the last minute, rather than cooked together so the flavors mingle. Better is pasta bianca, angel hair with ricotta and a few red cherry tomatoes. There is also tiny ricotta-filled ravioli in a refreshing tomato cream sauce.

Tortilla-crusted mahi mahi topped with tropical fruit salsa just doesn’t work for me. The fish is bright red with crumbled red tortillas, and though the flesh is moist enough, the herb rice it sits on is dry, and the flavors do not harmonize. Pork chops, piled high with a stack of crisply fried onions, rest on a nice sauce of peaches and balsamic vinegar. CCG sirloin is steak served with a different sauce every week. When I visited, it was an intense red onion confit--not bad, but the meat was tough and gristly.

Two desserts are worth a shout.

One is an old-fashioned pineapple upside-down cake, served warm and gooey with creme anglaise, all yellow cake and caramelized pineapple slices. The other is called, a bit boastfully, great apple pie. It’s a pleasant wedge of pie with a bit too much crust, served hot with a scoop of lavender-scented vanilla ice cream and a well-crafted hot caramel sauce.

Service is earnest and pleasant, and there are a host of fairly priced California wines on the list such as a half-bottle of ’95 Saintsbury Pinot Noir ($17) and a ’94 Cabernet Sauvignon from Caymus ($39).

At lunchtime, when it is pleasant to sit on the patio and watch life slowly pass by in downtown Orange, there are 8-inch Boboli pizzas, good cheeseburgers and a hearty hot meatloaf sandwich. By the time Citrus City Grille has been around long enough to blend in, it may even turn into a grown-up restaurant.

Citrus City Grille is expensive: appetizers, $6-$7; greens, $4.50-$9; pastas, $11-$17; grilled items, $13-$21.

BE THERE

* Citrus City Grille, 122 N. Glassell St., Orange. (714) 639-9600. Open daily; lunch 11 a.m-2:30 p.m., dinner 5-10 p.m. All major cards.