Ostensibly, Flour represents a sea change in the career of restaurateur Paul Minnillo, who most recently – and famously – helmed the Baricelli Inn. The restaurant was a 25-year veteran of a fine dining scene that had all but ceased to exist by the time the bleary bastion shuttered last July. If Minnillo and his talented chef and business partner Chris DiLisi needed a culinary revitalization, they hoped to give it rise with Flour.
Far from the historic environs of Baricelli, the Flour space sits among a partially vacated suburban-chic shopping plaza in Moreland Hills. The manufactured character of the facade gives way to a dining space that embraces a contemporary bleakness, the work of architect Steven Kordalski. The barren walls are slate gray, the floor is concrete and the tables' steely finish could provide the finishing accent to enliven an embalmer's workspace. Tall ceilings are accentuated by unremarkable recessed lighting, and the casual bar-lounge and dining room are separated by a glass-fronted wine cellar and a cascading curtain of metal beads. It's a visceral response to the staid style of the former Baricelli – and it works superbly.
Given Flour's Italianate inclinations, the architecturally perspicuous move would've been a rustic setting: warmly colored walls, wooden floors and tabletops, and extraneous, tenuously Italian bric-a-brac. But this is about moving forward, and Minnillo and DiLisi stuck to their guns when and where it mattered most.
The space is cool, not cold. The staff is attentive, warm and engaging. On a number of visits, the dining room, bar and lounge were all buzzing as wine flowed from an Italian-centric grape list that features more than 60 each of red and white choices, as well an an all-Italian showcase of glass pours (alongside some more international bubbles). The subjects of a well-edited cocktail list are among the unusual suspects, and the "Campari old fashioned" – the bitter citrus bite of the chief spirit sweetened with orange-fennel honey, a splash of soda and topped with a cherry – is emblematic of Flour's seamless gustatory mingling of old and new, a mod bar Italia.
The kitchen's phalanx of cooks supply an energetic focal point from the lounge and bar, and a resoundingly delicious volley of dishes to the entire restaurant. Among the restaurant's only rustic nods (other than elementary school–esque wooden chairs that are crippling over an extended stay and a curious jean-and-flannel staff dress code that's more Bob Evans than Bologna) is the fiery epicenter of Flour: a wood-burning oven that creates singularly wondrous savoriness from its expertly manned 720ºF-plus belly.
