The first indication that La Valse des Fleurs operates according to slightly different rules may arrive before you taste anything. You order a latte. Someone asks what month you were born.
This happened to my mother.
I had brought my parents to the café after discovering it myself, and the question appeared to have no relationship whatsoever to what she had ordered. Then her drink arrived in a porcelain cup decorated for January.
This is what happens at La Valse des Fleurs. You begin with coffee and somehow end up discussing china.
The café sits at 42 West Hudson Avenue in Englewood, inside a building that once housed a bank. The structure stands apart rather than disappearing into a continuous strip of storefronts, with large windows that send natural light across a room filled with flowers, antiques, chandeliers, paintings, silverware and the accumulated objects of somebody who clearly does not believe a café must be furnished from a restaurant-supply catalogue.
There is still a bank vault inside.
This is worth mentioning because there are places that attempt to manufacture character and places fortunate enough to inherit it. La Valse des Fleurs inherited a vault, brass hardware, old woodwork, moldings, cabinetry and a glass enclosure that founder Elina Paliakova immediately imagined filled with flowers. Much of the original architecture was preserved while the former bank became a European-inspired café and floral space. The vault remains, awaiting a future use Elina has not yet fully revealed.
For now, it is one more reason to look around.
And you should look around.
A small Eiffel Tower sits among the objects. There is an antique carousel, old frames and candlesticks, Dresden figurines arranged as a musical trio and paintings whose characters Elina has effectively adopted. There is a grandfather clock that has stopped working. There is mismatched china, which means the cup arriving at your table may bear little resemblance to the one at the next table.
The cumulative effect avoids the peculiar perfection of a themed restaurant. There is too much personal history here for that. These things were collected rather than ordered.
Then there are the roses.
On one visit, I ordered rose water served with a rose frozen into the ice, an absurdly pretty detail that made drinking water seem briefly more interesting than drinking water has any right to be. Roses recur throughout La Valse des Fleurs, appearing in the visual identity of the café and in drinks and pastries. Floral lattes and specialty drinks share menu space with the cappuccinos and familiar coffees expected of a café, while the tea selection reflects Elina’s longstanding attachment to tea rituals. Current offerings extend well beyond coffee and pastry, with crêpes, croques and other European-influenced dishes forming a substantial food menu.
Some of those dishes have biographies.
The croque monsieur traces back to Elina’s childhood visits to France, where her host family packed the sandwich for excursions. Crêpes trace farther back, to summers at her grandmother’s home, where stacks of thin blini appeared in the mornings and children collected berries outside. Golden Cockerel soup, a clear chicken broth served with a crêpe, comes directly from her grandmother.
That history matters because it explains why La Valse des Fleurs doesn’t quite feel like a French café imported wholesale into Englewood. France supplies much of the atmosphere, but Eastern Europe occasionally enters through another door. Italy is present too, as is the influence of Elina’s culinary training there. The result is European in a broad and personal sense, assembled from the places that mattered to the people who built it.
If you want the longer version of that story, read our profile of founder Elina Paliakova, The Woman Who Stopped Saving Things for Someday.
The more immediate pleasure of visiting, however, is discovering the details without needing their biographies first.
On a previous visit with my parents, I watched the birth-month cup arrive at the table. On other visits, I’ve tried the omelette, croque monsieur, crêpes, tea and rose water. What stays with me is the attention given to presentation. Plates and cups seem selected rather than assigned. A drink can arrive looking like a small composition. The experience asks you to notice what is in front of you.
That sounds like a small distinction until you consider how most of us consume coffee.
We carry it.
We drink it in cars. We walk down sidewalks with it. We place it beside laptops and forget about it until it gets cold. Coffee has become remarkably good at accompanying another activity.
La Valse des Fleurs would prefer that, occasionally, coffee be the activity.
Coffee has become remarkably good at accompanying another activity. La Valse des Fleurs would prefer that, occasionally, coffee be the activity.
That idea comes partly from Elina’s childhood travels in France, where she was struck by the amount of time people were willing to give a meal. Food created a reason to gather. Conversation was part of eating. Nobody appeared especially anxious to reclaim the table.
The café is trying to create some of that rhythm here, in a county where New York City sits close enough to exert its gravitational pull over almost everything. Bergen residents routinely cross the Hudson for elaborate afternoon teas, intimate European cafés and places that promise an experience along with the meal. Elina’s ambition is to give people fewer reasons to assume that interesting experiences require a bridge or tunnel.
The plans extend beyond daytime coffee. She has spoken about afternoon tea, workshops, movie evenings, live music and other events that would turn the room into a gathering place. The café has already expanded beyond its earliest coffee-and-pastry identity into more substantial dining. The long-term idea is a place where staying is part of the point.
Meet founder Elina Paliakova, who tells us how childhood memories, France, flowers, family, and an old Englewood bank came together to become La Valse des Fleurs.
Go inside La Valse des Fleurs with Bergen Society and meet founder Elina Paliakova, who explains how an old Englewood bank became a café shaped by France, flowers, childhood memories and a lifelong affection for beautiful things.
Take a quick look around La Valse des Fleurs, from its former life as a bank to the beautiful food, drinks, and unexpected details that make this Englewood café worth discovering.
There is a practical tension inside all of this prettiness. La Valse des Fleurs has developed the reputation of a hidden discovery, and hidden discoveries eventually face the problem of remaining in business. Elina says customers have actually told her they don’t want to tell other people about the café because they would prefer to keep it for themselves.
She laughs about this, although she would also very much like them to tell people.
The goal is to become a destination without acquiring the impersonal feeling that sometimes accompanies becoming one. Elina can imagine customers planning ahead to come here. She can imagine the concept eventually extending to other towns or cities. Growth, to her, means the ability to improve the service, create more experiences and pay even closer attention to details.
“Maybe five years from now, La Valse des Fleurs is no longer such a hidden gem,” she says, “but somehow, when you walk through the door, it still feels like one.”
“Maybe five years from now, La Valse des Fleurs is no longer such a hidden gem, but somehow, when you walk through the door, it still feels like one.”
There is something appealing about that ambition because discovery is part of the pleasure of local life. Bergen County is dense enough that it is easy to assume we know what is here. We travel the same roads, pass the same buildings and develop routines around a surprisingly small collection of places. Then an old bank becomes a café, someone leaves the vault intact, fills a glass room with flowers and serves your mother a latte in a January cup.
Suddenly, there is somewhere new to linger.
And that may be the most convincing reason to visit La Valse des Fleurs. The flowers are lovely. The old bank is unusual. The drinks photograph beautifully, and the china alone could keep an antiques enthusiast occupied through a second cappuccino. Yet the place’s most distinctive offering may simply be permission to stay longer than necessary.
The grandfather clock isn’t keeping track anyway.
