Along with a kitchen, a chef, and a waitstaff, one requirement for a neighborhood restaurant is that it have a neighborhood around it. For years, Oakland’s Uptown district hardly qualified. Its forlorn blocks along Telegraph Avenue and Broadway have long been dreary boulevards of broken urban promises, lined with shuttered storefronts and abandoned buildings. In 2002, Jerry Brown enjoyed a photo op by lighting the marquee on the Fox Theater, a grand movie palace that hasn’t screened a film since the early ’70s. (Let It Be was the title; the locals let it be, all right.) A picture that told a truer story appeared a few weeks later, when the sign’s neon O flickered out.

These days, of course (and you knew this line was coming), Uptown is on the upswing. Freshly minted condominiums rise amid dust bowls of new construction. Businesses are trickling back. Once as rare as the dodo, the occasional free-range pedestrian has been spotted wandering around Uptown after dark.

Among the recent arrivals are Thomas Schnetz and Dona Savitsky, proprietors of two East Bay Mexican restaurants (Doña Tomas and Tacubaya) whose popularity, to my mind, outpaces their appeal. But with their third venue, Flora, a California-ized bistro, they’ve hit their stride.

The restaurant occupies what was once the Flower Depot, in an art deco building overlaid with black and blue tiles, and its atmosphere pays homage to that era. Servers wear black vests. Bartenders, strapped in black suspenders, mix drinks against a moody backdrop of glowing bottles of spirits, enhancing the sense of time and place. Flora is a smartly rendered period piece, trendy-feeling but uncontrived. It turns the clock back to a romantic moment: the Jazz Age at the start of cocktail hour.

The power of nostalgia is especially compelling in this part of Oakland, where glorious but long-neglected buildings are hollowed-out reminders of a time when the city was the place to be. Who doesn’t root for Oakland’s full revival? But sentiment alone can’t sustain a restaurant. Flora also draws strength from its menu, approachable California cooking with just enough edge to match the restaurant’s worldly but laid-back air.

Chef Jason Moniz, formerly of Nectar in San Fran­cisco, toggles adroitly between classic and contemporary dishes, and pulls off modern touches with unpretentious flair. A bowl of chicken broth, light-bodied but richly aromatic, serves as a buoyant bath for tortellini bulging with mortadella and chicken. Thin-cut kampachi crudo, drizzled with rock salt, soy, and yuzu, arrives between cucumber and slivered serrano—opposing flavors that allow the fish to play it both hot and cool.

Moniz knows how to keep it simple. He serves a big, red-blooded New York steak with sautéed spinach, horseradish cream, and a straight-ahead helping of potatoes au gratin (OK, he shows off with housemade Worcestershire sauce). But he also holds your interest with mild dashes of adventure. He brightens a grilled pork chop with Meyer lemon marmalade and grounds a cloudlike soufflé of butternut squash in an earthy, cream-thickened wild mushroom sauce. In its milieu and menu, Flora invites you to come for a burger—and to come as you are. Just don’t mind the scallops flanked by kumquat relish, or the foie gras laced with pineapple gastrique.

Whether Flora would stand out equally in other neighborhoods is difficult to gauge. Some restaurants are inseparable from their surroundings. As an Oakland resident—frustrated by the city’s floundering and personally invested in its improvements (no, I don’t own a restaurant, but I’d like the streets to be slightly safer)—I was probably more tolerant of Flora’s misses. When a puntarelle salad arrived in long, tough stalks, with a knife too dull to cut it, I chewed the rugged greens like a ruminant—passive, uncomplaining, with leaves and stems sticking absurdly from my mouth.

I’m susceptible to sentiment. But I’ve also dined at enough subpar Oakland restaurants to recognize when one is doing most things right. Flora’s service is affable and attentive. The wine list, though broad and solid, is outshined by the cocktails, a winning mix of classic drinks (gently stirred martinis and Manhattans) and sprightly, modern concoctions like the Corpse Reviver 2, fashioned from Cointreau, lemon, absinthe, and lillet blanc. During all of my visits, the bar jammed up early with unwinding 9-to-5ers. But as the evenings wore on, patrons lingered in an eclectic gathering of hipsters and hippies, a diverse crowd that seemed to resemble much of Oakland itself. Desserts ran the gamut from superb to so-so (vibrant pineapple sorbet with a crumbled sugary cookie; a bland caramel pudding that tasted mostly like chilled butter). But the sweetest taste came from something deeper: Uptown has good reason to welcome Flora, but fauna are what really bring a neighborhood to life.