Bistro La Floraison 1-11-2025

All in all I'd probably give this restaurant a 3.5 or a 4/5 

This actually used to be a French restaurant we liked.  It closed during Covid.  Then it sat empty for awhile and when it reopened...it was a French restaurant again!  

First the bad news...parking!  Parking actually is horrible.  When we went to this restaurant it was about a week after STL had 12" of snow.  So, the snow was piled up along side all the streets.  There are 3 acclaimed restaurants in the same block (AKAR, Wright's Tavern, and Bistro La Floraison).  They all share the same 15-20 street parking spots and if you don't get one of those...you are walking for a few blocks!!  Mike dropped me off at the door and then it took him a good 15ish minutes to find a spot and make his way back to the restaurant.  

Now, the better news.  This restaurant has a prix fixe menu that includes their good French onion soup AND an entree and a dessert.  That's what I got.  The entree choices were good...I had a hard time deciding between the mussels and the scallops.  

I had studied the wine menu.  We got a bottle of Crocus.  It was a Malbec.  That is close to a cabernet, so we knew we would like it.  

As I said, we both started with the French onion soup.  It was very good.  We had recently had French onion soup at Bread Co.  It is good, but this is totally in a different level!

I said earlier that I had the choice of mussels or scallops (among other choices).  I chose scallops.  I knew they were made with cauliflower (which I don't really like), but I LOVE scallops.  So, I was excited to see them when they arrived.  They were on a mixture (swirled prettily together) of 2 sauces (one was lemon and one was cream).  The cauliflower was roasted.  I tried to eat a couple florets, but I just don't really like it.  My biggest problem with the entire dish was that it wasn't warm.  I don't know if it was finished before Mike's entree, but it was nearly room temp by the time it was served to me and the cool sauces weren't great.  The fact that there were only 3.5 scallops was not great, but that is pretty norm.

Scallops entree

Chicken cordon bleu

Mike didn't go with the prix fixe menu.  He just ordered French onion soup and the chicken cordon bleu.  His entree was great.  It was served over some kind of greens, which he didn't eat and had a side of mushrooms (which I ate for him), but the chicken was awfully good.  It was hot and pretty juicy.  He liked the smokey addition of the ham and cheese.  

My prix fixe menu said that I would get a chocolate torte for dessert.  Mike and I decided we would split this.  Mike also got an espresso martini.  (Normally he would get a coffee or cappuccino, but they didn't have these choices).  He liked the martini.  

Mike's espresso martini.  

This chocolate torte was actually kind of laughable.  It was cut so thin we each only got 2 bites.  It was on a sauce of what tasted like chocolate milk and had a dolop of real whipped cream.  It was OK but was unbelievably small!