Housed on the ground floor of the granite-and-concrete Met Breuer museum, Flora Bar is the first uptown effort of Ignacio Mattos and Thomas Carter, the Mediterranean-minded restaurateurs behind Estela and Café Altro Paradiso. Here, the focus is tapas-style seafood and boutique wines fit for a more formal, Upper East Side crowd, though casual-cool downtowners have been known to stop by. Mattos’s elegantly presented lunch and dinner plates include tuna tartare with sunflower and hajiki, an omelet with hackleback and trout roe, and a much-buzzed-about lobster crudo. Flora Bar’s expansive dining room—which boasts titanic windows, black-leather banquettes, and Modernist circular light fixtures—has a breathable feel and also sets the restaurant apart from the neighborhood’s stuffier establishments. The marble-top-bar area is a must-visit, as is Flora Coffee, an adjoining café that serves inventive sandwiches and snacks. (Note: both the restaurant and the café are closed Mondays.)
Flora Bar
Images by Flora Bar
