August 25, 2026

Melissa McCart

I can't resist a fritto misto, particularly the fried lemons.

A spread from Floradora. Photo: Evan Sung

After co-owners Cody Pruitt and Jacob Cohen flipped West Village restaurant Libertine into Capitaine, the duo is doing it again: They've closed Chateau Royale in Greenwich Village, and they're turning it into a new, less expensive neighborhood restaurant at 205 Thompson Street, at Bleecker Street, on Thursday, August 27.

Floradora will serve mozzarella sticks, linguine and clams, veal Milanese, a French dip, martinis, and a Blue Hawaiian cocktail, with food from executive chef Vanessa Velez. She also led the kitchen at Chateau Royale and previously worked at Verjus in Paris and Sunny’s in Miami.  Also on the menu: scallop crudo with bloody mary vinaigrette; spicy tuna rösti with avocado crema; lobster and jalapeño fritters; pigs in a blanket; and salt-and-vinegar fritto misto. Pastas include spicy vodka garganelli; tortellini alfredo; and oxtail lasagna. There’s also a cheeseburger with fries, a mortadella club, grilled sea bream, a 72-hour American wagyu short rib served au poivre, and pastrami-spiced pork ribs. It’s the sort of sprawling menu that works for a snack and a drink stop, as well as an actual dinner. The menu Eater reviewed did not yet list food prices, but it’s fair to say that unlike Chateau Royale, entrees will not start as high as $40.

Upstairs at Floradora. Photo: Evan Sung

The drinks make the same case. Pruitt has mini and full-size gin and vodka martinis, plus a giardiniera Gibson; Cosmo; lychee Vesper; and a Monkey Suit made with gin, vermouth bianco, banana, and absinthe. The June Bug makes a questionable TGI Friday’s drink taste way better with rum, coconut, pineapple, melon, and banana. Wines by the glass run from $14 for Lambrusco to $21 for sauvignon blanc, with most falling in the teens. 

Floradora is the second time in just over two months that Pruitt and Cohen have swapped out one of their restaurants for a substantially different one. In June, they replaced Libertine, their French bistro at 684 Greenwich Street, with the seafood tavern Capitaine. Pruitt says he wanted to make the restaurant “more accessible, price-wise, as well as cuisine-wise, and vibe-wise, so we can see our neighbors more often.”

A decision for change

What happened next prompted them to take another look at Chateau Royale. Within Capitaine’s first couple of weeks, Pruitt says, people who had never gone to Libertine were showing up at the new restaurant two or three times a week. “These people were making it part of their lives very quickly,” he says.

That was what Pruitt and Cohen weren’t seeing enough of at Chateau Royale. Pruitt says he was proud of the restaurant and what it accomplished, but they weren’t seeing the same neighborhood faces even every couple of weeks. He also started paying attention to where he and his friends actually ate after work and to how customers ordered at Chateau.

“They were getting the hot dog, they were getting the burger,” Pruitt says. “Yeah, some people were getting [Dover] sole and duck, but they were looking for the most accessible part of our menu.”

Floradora pulls from the kind of neighborhood restaurants where Pruitt himself is a regular. He name drops favorites like the Odeon that can serve different purposes on different nights. The downstairs room at Floradora is intended to operate as a bar in its own right rather than simply the bar attached to the dining room upstairs. Thursday through Saturday, it will stay open until 2 a.m., with a late-night menu.

Accessible dishes with behind-the-scenes technique

The kitchen, meanwhile, is doing more than its straightforward menu descriptions let on. The fritto misto, for example, uses masarepa and rice flour to keep the coating crisp, with calamari, zucchini or summer squash, scallions, and thin wheels of lemon finished with salt-and-vinegar dust. But Pruitt doesn't particularly want diners to have to know all of that.

“The phrase we keep on coming back to is ‘no homework,’” he says.

That also explains things like what Pruitt calls the “world’s nerdiest” mozzarella sticks: recognizable food with fancy technique that’s not the focus in the dining room. 

Velez, who started her career in pastry, is making a bananas Foster split with caramelized bananas, brown butter ice cream, strawberry gelato, and banana ice cream, along with a tuxedo cake with chocolate and peanut butter.

“I don’t think there are enough chocolate and peanut butter desserts on New York restaurant menus anymore,” Pruitt says. “I guess everyone’s too cool for that now. But we’re not.”

Intel