Katie Buchl

Review of Cafe Flora

I love(d) this restaurant. At I ve point my husban...

I love(d) this restaurant. At I ve point my husband and I were coming every other Saturday for a few months. Our favorite dinner entrees are the Italian burger, seasonal polenta, and mushroom French dip. We love the fried avocado and pate appetizers. We ve celebrated birthdays here and have recommended this restaurant to vegetarian friends, vegan friends and carnivores. We ve recently had a few experiences that were not consistent with the quality we ve come to enjoy and expect.
January 2019: group of 7 to celebrate husband s birthday. He ordered the Italian burger. When it came out on a pita and not a burger bun, he kindly questioned the server helping our table s server, as he was expecting a burger thought it was the wrong dish.
In response-
The server assisting our own: yea, we serve it with a pita.
H: I ordered a burger...
Server: no, we serve it with a pita.
H: I ve ordered this before. It comes on a bun.
Server: we ran out of buns. we re serving it with a pita.

Rather than arguing, the server should have said from the beginning they were out of buns. Or when it became known the restaurant was out of buns, it would have been nice to know.

March: very dry, tasteless Italian burger.

May 2019: i ordered vegan spring polenta and husband ordered the Italian burger w avocado. First, my husband s burger was delivered to the table immediately behind us. A few minutes later the error was realized and the burger was sent back to the kitchen. A few minutes later the burger re-appears and is correctly delivered to our table. Our server informs us my vegan polenta was made with cheese and the kitchen would remake it but the server didn t want the burger to get cold. The burger and fries were already cold. We sent it back. My polenta and the burger came out at the same time but the burger that was supposed to be made vegan came out with cheese. They whisked away the burger to be remade. When it finally came out for the it was hot and perfectly made.

My polenta was good but honestly I couldn t enjoy it with everything we experienced at our table that evening. And I was very dissatisfied that the dish that supposedly included mushrooms came out with just .25 of a small mushroom. So disappointing. I mentioned it to my server and the response was it s not a mushroom dish. It s a spring vegetable dish. Ok, I get it. Still a bummer.

I know restaurants have their off nights, we all do. However, the last few visits have seemed to all have had something off about them. Our server last night comped the burger, which was appreciated and the right thing to do.

All in all, last night was disappointing for all of the reasons listed but also because my husband and I wanted to have a nice dinner *together* and we ate almost completely separately.

We ll be back because most times the food and atmosphere are very pleasant and worthy of five-stars.