Il Fiorista – the NoMad kitchen built inside a flower shop

Il Fiorista occupies a converted ground-floor space on West 26th Street in NoMad, where a working flower shop and an Italian dining room share one roof beneath an oversized interior window. Founded by Milan-born husband-and-wife team Mario and Alessandra De Benedetti, who emigrated from Italy and opened the restaurant in September 2019, it treats flowers as ingredient rather than ornament, running a seasonal Mediterranean-Italian menu alongside a floral boutique and an education centre teaching bouquet-making and edible-flower classes. The room, designed by architect Elizabeth Roberts, seats around 85 across a mix of new and vintage furniture, with a further 20 covers in a private dining area that doubles as part of the flower shop. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide. In a city well supplied with floral wallpaper, this is one of the few dining rooms where the flowers routinely end up on the plate too, from mustard-green blossom over trout tartare to chamomile aioli beneath black bass.

01The room and the setting

Architect Elizabeth Roberts was commissioned to design a space that would celebrate flowers and herbs beyond mere decoration. The result pairs a bar built around a striking floral display at its centre with a dining room that blends new and vintage furniture and lighting, while an oversized interior window separates the boutique from the tables without closing off the open, greenhouse-like feel of the space.

A seasonal outdoor patio extends service onto the street in warmer months, used for both dinner and the restaurant's aperitivo hour, giving NoMad diners a second, open-air register of the same botanical room.

02The chef

Executive chef Garrison Price leads the kitchen, working closely with local and regional farmers on a seasonal menu rooted in Mediterranean flavours that treats flowers and herbs as edible ingredients rather than garnish. His CV runs through some of the city's more exacting kitchens, including Il Buco Alimentari, the Mandarin Oriental's Asiate, José Andrés' China Poblano, and concepts developed under Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

Insider tip

Open seven days for dinner and aperitivo hour; weekend brunch; booking advised for dinner.

03The cooking

The dinner menu runs through familiar Italian shapes with unfamiliar additions: burrata arrives with pear marmalade and a sunflower-seed soffritto, while pastas such as pappardelle and campanelle white bolognese follow close behind. A trout tartare toast is built on pickled mustard seed, Calabrian chile and fresh horseradish, finished with whichever brassica flower the market yields that week, and a black bass main is plated with chamomile aioli and flowering watercress.

Dessert tends toward a lemon meringue tart to close the meal.

04Wine and drinks

Behind the bar is Gates Otsuji, the mixologist previously behind the cocktail programmes at 701 West, The Standard and NIX, known for nuanced, imaginative flavour profiles.

05The neighbourhood

The restaurant sits in NoMad, a short walk from Madison Square Park, in the stretch of the Flatiron District known for dining rooms that double as design statements. Produce is drawn from the Union Square Greenmarket and other local producers, in keeping with the kitchen's seasonal, farm-forward approach.

06When to go and booking

Il Fiorista is open seven days a week for dinner and an aperitivo hour, with weekend brunch served both indoors and on the seasonal patio. The same address runs a private event space and a Flower Room, where the team teaches classes ranging from DIY bouquet-making to an introduction to edible flowers.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.