Café Fleuri is a Southern French bistro at 109 Washington Street in the Financial District, from Michelin-starred chef Eduard Frauneder. It opened in spring 2026 in the space that was Schilling for ten years, and it is the rare FiDi restaurant that isn’t built around the office lunch rush.
We work in FiDi. We know the hustle: the quick lunch, the sit-down spot you leave the moment you’ve inhaled your food, the sandwich eaten standing up because the afternoon is already gone. Café Fleuri is the opposite of all that, and it’s sitting right in the middle of it.
The room
You walk in and the noise of Washington Street drops away. Floral wallpaper, green walls, tufted banquettes in a warm marigold, bistro chairs. The whole thing reads unhurried in a way that feels almost stubborn given the neighborhood. There’s a backyard too, which is a genuine rarity this far downtown.
The staff were lovely: attentive without hovering, happy to explain dishes, and entirely unbothered that we took our time. That matters more than it sounds. Half the appeal here is that nobody is trying to turn your table.
Take the time to find this place, and then take the time to actually be in it. Eat European: slowly, over a long lunch, with your phone face down. It’s clearly a favorite among the people who’ve found it, and to its detriment, almost nobody wanders the two blocks past Broadway to do so.
Who is the chef?
Café Fleuri comes from Eduard Frauneder, chef Edi, who has been shaping New York’s dining scene for close to two decades. Austrian-born, Michelin-starred for his first New York restaurant, and an Iron Chef America winner. For ten years he ran Schilling in this same space; this is what replaced it.
The pivot is interesting. Instead of doubling down on Austrian food, he went to the south of France, with Provençal cooking and an eye toward North Africa. What comes out of the kitchen is precise but not fussy.
The Café Fleuri menu
The à la carte lunch and dinner menu, as of August 2026.
To start
- Sourdough Bread, $5. From Pain d’Avignon, with cultured butter and smoked sea salt
- Add sweet peppers and anchovies, $12
- Add fromage blanc pea pistou and herbes de Provence, $8
Salade
- Frisée aux Lardons, $18. Warm Dijon vinaigrette and farm egg
- Salade Plus Verte, $18. Spring peas and shoots, bibb lettuce, poached shrimp
Petits Plats
- Croustade d’Avocat, $18. Poached egg, sourdough, mâche
- Frits Variés, $18. Montauk squid, boquerones, shrimp, aioli piquant
- Saumon Mariné, $22. House-cured Atlantic salmon, horseradish cream, crispy capers
- Carpaccio de Filet Mignon, $28. Beech mushroom, olio verde, Parmigiano Reggiano
Plats Principaux
- Le Burger, $28. Gruyère and confit d’oignon
- Salade Niçoise, $28. Bigeye tuna, olives, spring vegetables
- Escalope de Poulet Grenobloise, $32. Lemon, capers, parsley, petite salad
- Loup de Mer, $32. Piperade, bay leaf, buttered pilaf
- Onglet de Boeuf, $38. Marinated hanger steak, café de Paris butter
Dessert, $14 each
- Tarte de Fromage Blanc, strawberries and basil
- Tarte au Citron
- Mousse au Chocolat
- Homemade ice cream, ask for daily flavors
Drinks
Cocktails are $19, non-alcoholic cocktails $15. The wine list is short and mostly French: Touraine sauvignon blanc, Bourgogne blanc, a chilled Gamay, a Côtes de Provence rosé, and a Castillon Bordeaux. Beers run $8 to $16 and lean French, Belgian, and Austrian, with a couple of non-alcoholic options.
What we ordered
We came during Restaurant Week, a two-course prix fixe at $30 for lunch, which is an unusually good number for this quality of cooking.
Le Burger. Gruyère and confit d’oignon, with frites. Well composed and genuinely good, though it sits at the outer edge of an appropriate size. Another half inch and it tips into the category of burgers you have to dismantle before you can eat them. The onion confit does a lot of work, and the frites arrived hot and crisp.
Salade Niçoise. Clean and bright, and generous with the bigeye tuna. Our one quibble: the black olives were far too generous, and between them and the anchovy-forward dressing the whole plate skewed briny and salty enough to throw off the balance. Ask for them light and this becomes a very good salad.
Mousse au Chocolat. Deep and not oversweet. The classic done correctly.
Tarte au Fromage Blanc. The standout, and the one that needs a word of explanation, because everyone sees “cheese tart” on a menu and immediately moves on. Don’t. This is closer to a light, egg-based Portuguese cheesecake than anything you’re picturing: airy, fluffy, barely sweet. The Restaurant Week version came with Georgia peaches and lemon verbena, and the verbena gave it a floral lift that kept it from going heavy. It would be perfect with a dessert wine, or better yet, our preference, a macchiato or a cortado.
To drink: a Galipette cider from France, and La Menthe Fraîche, which is mint, ginger, and lime, sharp enough to be interesting rather than just sweet.
What to order at Café Fleuri
If you’re going once: the loup de mer is the dish the kitchen is known for, and the tarte au fromage blanc is the dessert to get regardless of what fruit is in season. Start with the sourdough and the pea pistou. If you want a proper lunch rather than a light one, the onglet de boeuf with café de Paris butter is the move.
Order the niçoise if you like, but ask them to go easy on the olives.
Hours, address & reservations
Café Fleuri
109 Washington Street, New York, NY 10006
(212) 406-1202 · cafefleuri.com
- Lunch: Monday to Friday, 12:00 to 2:30 PM
- Dinner: Monday to Wednesday 5:00 to 9:00 PM, Thursday to Saturday 5:00 to 10:00 PM
- Closed Sunday
Reservations open daily at midnight for the following 60 days, via OpenTable and Resy. The room is small, so book ahead, especially for dinner.
Price: Expect roughly $50 to $70 per person à la carte before drinks. Summer 2026 Restaurant Week runs through August 16: $30 for a two-course lunch, $45 for a three-course dinner, with a 20% gratuity added automatically and full table participation required.
Is Café Fleuri worth it?
Yes, and specifically worth going out of your way for. FiDi isn’t where most people go looking for a leisurely French lunch, which is exactly why this works. You get a restaurant of this caliber without the reservation warfare you’d face for the same thing in the West Village.
If you can only go once, go for lunch, sit in the back, and order the tarte au fromage blanc.
