Flora, Uptown, Oakland, CA.
Chicken, mortadella, and pancetta tortellini in brodo
Salumi plate (shared)
Steelhead with bacon, green salsa, and pureed celery root
Flora Martini
Caramel pudding with sea salt, whipped cream, and a rosemary pine nut cookie (shared)
I’ve tried very hard to like Flora, with its impossibly high ceiling, shelves of liquor bathed in warm amber light, and nicely appointed art deco interior. I’ve tried so hard that I’ve eaten there three times before writing this. Each time my conclusion has remained unchanged: Flora is a beautiful space that fails to live up to its potential. To get a preview, you can peek at B’s musings, here. (I’m the “friend” quoted.) Granted, they haven’t been open very long, so perhaps all of our complaints should be taken as “opportunities for improvement” rather than condemnations.
What I do like about Flora: sauntering up to the nearly empty bar (on a weekday) and enjoying its expansiveness with a well-made Flora Martini, composed with Plymouth gin and a rinse of imported elderflower syrup. What I don’t like about Flora: the appalling inconsistency between bartenders (ask me which ones to order drinks from), the ambitious but mediocre food, the downright abysmal service.
Regardless, I sipped my martini. It was good, somewhere in between the first Flora Martini I’d ever had (fantastic) and the second (crap). And I waited. And waited. And waited… until, due to the server’s error, all of our courses arrived at the same time. Sigh. No, I know it is not too much to expect a bartender to know about proper timing for food; this is where Wood Tavern shines. He also didn’t know what was on the salumi plate — prosciutto (razor-thin salty porky goodness, but no better than anywhere else), soppressata (delicious and peppery, my favorite), and “other” — nor did he bother to ask the kitchen what “other” was! I suppose it didn’t matter; it was dried out and sliced too thickly, anyhow. I avoided the candied chiles and overly sour cornichons, although the accompanying drizzle of honey was a nice touch.
You know how Marco Polo stole noodles from the Chinese and brought pasta back to Italy? Imagine if he did that with your average Chinatown won ton soup: an Italianate version of savory meat stuffed into slightly tough outer skins in an adequate but unremarkable chicken broth. This was Flora’s tortellini in brodo. It was a pale spectre compared to the stuffed pasta in brodo at Incanto, which benefits from the ethereal lightness of their pasta and the unmatchable richness of duck brodo.
I’ve waxed poetic on steelhead, one of my favorite fishes, so it’s no surprise that I immediately ordered it as my entree. It was cooked a little more that I like (which is to say, barely), but acceptable. However, the “green salsa” was more akin to a garlicky cilantro-parsley pesto, overpowering the delicate steelhead flavor by leaps and bounds. A waste of fish — dump the “salsa” atop something straightforward like salmon, please, and leave steelhead to those who know how to handle it, like Sea Salt! Given all of that, do I even need to mention the strangely gummy celery root puree which flanked it like a lifeless lump?
I must say that dessert was my favorite course of all, though still a little perplexing. I didn’t really like the dueling creamy textures of whipped cream AND pudding, so I avoided the whipped cream altogether. The rosemary pine nut cookie was good and the pudding was silky smooth with a pleasing caramel flavor, but soon, I was getting bored.
“Wait, where’s the sea salt? They need to add more, or use larger granules. I don’t taste it at all.”
Then we realized — it was IN the whipped cream! Bizarre, though it convinced me not to leave the whipped cream untouched, which would have been utter tragedy.
I can’t remember how much I paid for two. I’ve probably forgotten on purpose because it far outpaced the quality of the food. Needless to say, I’ll probably stick to drinks if I return, keeping a careful eye on which bartenders are present.
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P.S. – If you want the world’s most perfect, meticulously made, well-balanced martini (with commensurate pricing) and have a thick skin for pretentiousness, order one at Bourbon and Branch.
