Cardiff . Cheap Eats . Uncategorized

The Flora, Cardiff: revisit review

On July 27, 2025 by The Plate Licked Clean

‘The Flora? Seriously? Are you sure? The…Flora..?’

Less than two years ago that was a common reaction, chiefly from Cardiff University graduates who knew the Cathays pub in their pomp. You couldn’t blame them, I suppose.

Now, though? Things have changed. A new direction. It’s a decision which seems more and more inspired as the months pass.

If there was such a thing as Top Trumps: Cardiff Chef Edition- a niche product, but let’s run with it- there would be one card I’d be after.

Each pack had one, didn’t it? That card which was so strong in so many categories that you’d sit there smugly knowing you’d be odds-on to beat anything your opponent called.

You could make a strong case for that card being Steve Bennett’s.

Quite apart from any other high-scoring categories (‘Likelihood of another freshly healing Jack White tattoo’, perhaps) you’d be banking on some unbeatable scores. A maximum 10 for versatility, surely? From years in Michelin star-strewn kitchens, to head chef of Cardiff’s most relentlessly creative restaurant: then, a change of pace with a pan-Asian street food menu. In a Cathays student pub, no less.

Don’t take that as a given. Don’t assume a life of painstaking precision means a seamless transition to casual dining. I’ve had ‘street food’ from fine dining chefs which reeked of will-this-do, ideas which amounted to little more than an opportunistic yawn on their cardboard trays.

Let’s throw in another maximum ten, too. ‘Likelihood of being robbed in a bar snack showdown’. January 2025: Mesen’s inaugural Scotch Egg Championship. A memorable evening for local hospitality, with the assembled punters having their say. I’m sure the actual winner won’t care as they polish their trophy: but recent years have amply demonstrated that democracy is hugely overrated, and public opinion is all well and good until you get the wrong result.

Look, I’ve no desire to spark some Biggie v Tupac/ Drake v Kendrick Lamar style Scotch egg turf war. I’d like to avoid a slew of diss posts on Instagram culminating in drive-by ketchupings, but in the words of Billy Batts, ‘What’s right is right.’ And that night, The Flora’s onion bhaji scotch egg with naga dressing was The One. See? Robbed.

Back at The Flora, that Asian brief means Steve is free to riff off his inspirations than slavishly replicate. You’ll find kimchi and katsu, teriyaki and nori and gochujang, but they may be where you don’t expect them.

He makes it look easy, too.

One evening last May he spotted I was in with Jake Heckles (of the excellent Burnt Basque blog), and casually brought out a work in progress: delicate, plump little pork and prawn siu mai. It was just something he was playing around with, he said, something for us to try, and he wasn’t even sure if it would make it on to the menu: and yet here they were, and as good as any I’ve had from any local Chinese kitchen.

Onto an increasingly busy and eclectic table followed exemplary wild garlic, potato and paneer samosas; a kimchi rice fritter busy with chilli and furikake and topped with a perfectly con puntilla egg; hulking chicken tenders zigzagged with an inspired Thai green curry mayonnaise. Then: karaage chicken and spiced coleslaw, a sultry lamb barbacoa flatbread, beef cheek in clinging coconut-rich curry.

It is thirty degrees and climbing by midmorning today, so the beer garden is the spot. Music. ‘You say you gotta stay hungry/Hey baby, I’m just about starving tonight…’

The burger is ex-dairy beef, as is the brisket, which has been through a long process. Chargrilling, slow-cooking in a light beef stock for eight hours, resting; the cooking liquid is reduced to intensify the flavour, and the beef reincorporated to absorb it all. No, that fat isn’t skimmed off by prissy hands. It’s all in there. It’s all flavour.

It is a serious proposition, and it reminds me of the Ansh ‘Oriel Jones‘ which is the highest compliment I can pay in Welsh beefburger terms. (No, I’m still not over Ansh leaving. Bear with me. I’ll get there) It paints in big, bold strokes, boosted by mushroom ketchup: but that demands more acidity, so here is kimchi, punchily salty and sharp and the ideal counterbalance to all that beefy umami.

It’s a grown-up burger for grown ups, and all the better for it, because it tastes like beef is supposed to taste but often doesn’t. Is this my favourite burger in Cardiff? It may very well be.

The bun is made here (and the kitchen isn’t large by any means, so fair play) with beef fat, which should surprise no one at this point, and there’s another nod to Asian flavours in the baked-in nori. All sounds like a lot of work for pub grub, doesn’t it?

If you’ve been to Grangetown’s Lahore Kebabish (and if you haven’t, find the nearest mirror and have a stern word about your life choices) you have almost certainly had the hariyali kebab.

Steve has, of course, because there’s no snobbery to where he eats, which means he knows where the good stuff is in this city.

There, the chicken comes from tandoor to table seething quietly on cast iron: here it’s given a poised makeover on cardboard. It’s breast, not thigh, but initial misgivings are banished, because a three-hour brining delivers impeccably tender chicken.

This version doesn’t have that vivid nuclear fallout green glow you’ll find elsewhere. Often, that’s down to adding artificial food colouring, but there are no such shortcuts here, just a 24-hour marinade of green chillies, coriander, mint, spinach, garlic, ginger, yoghurt and spices before it is chargrilled. Tangy purplish charcoal mayonnaise is the cheffy bit here, as a lovely little naan, baked and basted with garlic, rounds off a memorable dish. It’s a striking version of one of my favourite dishes. Instantly, I’m smitten.

A lot of effort, this pub grub. I may have mentioned. Among the ‘lighter options’ is a bar snack riff on the ‘blooming’ onion, brined and dredged and served with a teriyaki sauce, the petals as fragile as a politician’s promise.

We linger over lamb belly ribs where smoky fat wobbles away from the bone; draped with pickles and a sprightly mint oil, there is no way to eat these except to commit to the process and dive in.

There are crisp Louisiana-spiced chicken tenders with lightly charred corn ‘ribs’ (we order a separate bowl of these) and the heft of a dipping sauce which combines the Southern states staple ‘red-eye gravy’ with a Cajun spice blend spiked with espresso and homemade hot sauce. It clings. It lingers.

Chicken has always been a standout here: here’s a breaded chicken thigh sandwich drenched in a mixture of hot sauces which is probably the simplest thing I eat. Simple? Probably, sure. Undeniably effective, though.

This is not a Gastropub, and I doubt I’ll be nominating The Flora next time the ‘Top 50’ voting form arrives. It is still very much a student pub, but an interesting, relaxed and unpretentious place to eat, and to enjoy deceptively ‘simple’ cooking.

This is what you get from owners with vision, I suppose. Make no mistake, that’s what it took to start this. When I first told you about what was happening here, I was fond of adding that I hoped other pubs across the city might latch on to it, and that it might spur them on to raise their game. Well, I’m still hoping.

As the man said: ‘You can’t start a fire without a spark’.

136 Cathays Terrace, Cardiff CF24 4HY