Flour

We recently met up with friends on their side of the river for a double date and let them take the lead when it came to choosing the restaurant. Their instincts were correct because Flour in Hoboken was delicious.

The headlines: this place is byob, very cozy, and boasts a fabulous menu with seasonal focus. They strongly encouraged us to dine family style and we’re all friends so we had no problem with that. It also meant we were able to make our way through most of the menu. For apps we got the tuna crudo (with apple ponzu, yuzu kosho, and pine nut cream), the whipped ricotta toast, spicy-ish Caesar, and the steak tartare (with “fried rice” arancini, yum yum sauce and a soy cured egg yolk). Each one was fabulous – truly – but the preparation of the tartare is what really got me. For mains, we got the spicy rigatoni (x2), mafaldine with a creamy Meyer lemon sauce, and the short rib with farrotto and celery root. Again, all great, but the rigatoni was particularly well-prepared. My only qualm with this section of the menu is that, aside from the short rib, which came with a supplemental charge, there was zero protein. I love a pasta course and have been known to get that as my main anyway, but I feel like you need to offer protein unless you are explicitly positioning yourself as a vegetarian-forward restaurant. Because it was Valentine’s Day and this was a prix fixe of sorts, we were simply given the desserts of the evening: their take on s’mores with ganache and marshmallow fluff and an olive oil cake with blood oranges. I’m not normally a dessert gal (gimme another order of that ricotta toast instead), but my fork diiiid return to that plate of “s’mores” more than once.

There are no prices listed on the online menu so we didn’t know exactly what we were getting into. I don’t think it’s ever cheap, but I do think they jacked up the prices for Valentine’s Day. It was somewhere between $250 and $300 per couple, which is insane considering there was zero alcohol. (I mean, there was alcohol, but not on the bill.) So now here I am in a very tough position because the food was outstanding but the price was also crazy. What’s a gal to do?