James Steady

Farm to table. We had an astoundingly good experience with the taster menu that came with excellent wine paring. The staff are so warm and welcoming. The restaurant is situated in a beautifully renovated barn attached to a rejuvenated Château kitchen garden that has to be seen to be believed. What a magical place!

One of the very last of its kind--the Bauer and its team Red Star FC are Paris' real football team with a real football atmosphere. The stadium is under reconstruction so hurry to catch a glimpse of it before it becomes something else!

Most importantly, do not be fooled, this is definitely not a four star hotel—it is somewhere between two and three stars, depending on your criteria. After belatedly reading other reviews here it seems the hotel has experienced the problems I have list below for at least four years without addressing them. If you’re looking for a little something extra it would be best to look elsewhere. But before I disclose more I’d like to point out that the staff are good at their jobs and very friendly, but despite their considerable effort Hotel Flora is best described as a budget hotel with a premium price tag—it’s not “boutique” as the name and Google searches suggest. All too often premises such as the Flora are branded as boutique or “Design hotels” and are presented to appeal to millennial tastes but this nearly always translates into a lack of substance. In the case of Hotel Flora, a lack of honest presentation best describes the mediocre experience we encountered. We booked a small room via booking.com about a week before we arrived but, due to poor communication between these two business partners, we were first placed in an extra small rather than the small room we had selected. This first room resembled a private room at a youth hostel or basic student accommodation rather than the neat, somewhat smallish room advertised and paid for in full in advance. The room was so small that the bed had to be jammed in a corner yet it was still not possible to move around with out stooping under the very low ceiling. After a discussion about disingenuous advertising in the foyer in full earshot of other guests, the staff moved us to a ‘small room’ that was larger but like the first option looked tired and scuffed—why have white walls unless you are prepared to maintain them, especially when the room is so small that most customers will almost certainly bang their luggage into the décoré? The bathroom was almost as large as the main room but lacked the furniture, amenities and smaller touches that would have made it “four star” or “boutique”, in my opinion. The room itself was small, but that’s what we booked so no complaints there! However, there was no way to regulate the temperature so good sleep wasn’t possible—it was either noisy with the window open or too hot with it closed. It was obvious that there was some detailed attention paid when selecting the Scandinavian style furniture it was tired and worn by the time we arrived. The bed itself was far too soft for my liking—a minor point, but it’s the one thing they should have spent a little more money on—so by this time we had given up on trying to get a room that looked like the one we thought we had booked and decided to see the city instead. The breakfast was good; we ate out the evening before but the kitchen looked good. The staff were efficient, friendly and welcoming and clearly work very hard—I got the impression that they were familiar with disappointed customers; they were clearly well used to dealing with the situation we found ourselves in. We booked at the Flora so that we could rest before we flew home after a lovely first visit to Sweden—unfortunately it was the worst part of the trip because I was unable to sleep well. I don’t think I’ll use Booking.com any more (certainly not my first bad experience) and I’m growing ever more likely to just book with reputable chain hotels rather than risk it at these shoddy type places that always seem to be a scam in some way—it’s a shame really, because I like trying different things and would like to visit places such as the Flora clearly aspires to be.