Dining details: Leatherby’s Cafe Rouge

Leatherby’s Cafe Rouge

Rating: ***

Location: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 615 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa; (714) 429-7640; www.patinagroup.com/caferouge

Ambience: Chic, contemporary restaurant in the new Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in the Orange County Performing Arts Center. It features high-sided, wrap-around booths, tables along the curved glass facade and an understated bar. It gets the pre-theater crowd and then quiets down until the performance lets out, and people filter in for a glass of Champagne or supper.

Service: Variable, from smart and comfortable to unseasoned, but polite and earnest.

Price: Dinner appetizers, $9 to $15; main courses, $22 to $37; desserts, $8; tasting menu, five-course, $75, six-course, $85; lunch appetizers, $6 to $14; main courses, $16 to $23.

Best dishes: Chilled bagaduce oysters, Dungeness crab salad with yuzu, fried calamari with udon noodles, yellowtail with appropriate garnishes, butter-poached Arctic char with blue oyster mushrooms, cream of rice with shrimp and asparagus, Colorado lamb with mountain potatoes, venison with Banyuls caramel sauce, apple Breton crisp with vanilla ice cream and cinnamon syrup.

Wine list: California intensive with a nice list of half bottles, and 20 or so wines by the glass, including dessert wines; corkage is complimentary.

Best table: One against the curved glass windows.

Details: Open for lunch daily from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and for dinner daily from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Dinner is also served after scheduled performances. Full bar. Valet parking, $8.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.