Flowers Cafe Returns to Essex Street After 4 Years
What’s old is new again. Flowers Cafe, the retro cafe displaced by development four years ago, returned to its Lower East Side stomping grounds last week.
The business reopened around the corner at 39 Essex Street last Friday with a free bagel promotion. You may have seen the handbills in the vicinity. We first reported its arrival in November of last year.
The menu boasts an array of sandwiches, salads, and beverages. All of it at seemingly affordable price points (everything is pretty much under $10).
Owner Bill Frazer first opened the cozy Flowers Cafe in 2005. It lasted ten years before the building at 355 Grand Street – a Federal style row house – was sold and later demolished. It’s now undergoing rebirth as a six-story mixed-use luxury development (but rising slowly).
The spot chosen for the Flowers reboot is a familiar one for Frazer, as he previously operated the Sweet Grapes Wine Bar next door, in what is currently Old Man Hustle.

Flowers Cafe on Grand St., February 2010