The Coffee Tree, 49 Strand Road, Derry Tel: 0747 2466 414
WHILE we were waiting for our food to arrive, a man came in and walked up to the counter. Before he could open his mouth, the waitress said to him, “I know what you want. Chicken salad, right?” Right. They both chuckled. The man added a coffee to his order, found a table, and sat down. Not long after, his salad arrived, a full dish of vibrant leaves topped with a generous helping of chicken.
No big deal, maybe, except it sort of is. He was obviously a regular, on his lunch break from work, so that suggests the food here is good enough to keep coming back for. And the staff remembered him, and remembered his order, showing care and attentiveness. Good food, a smile and a joke: that makes for a nice lunch.
Come March, the Coffee Tree will be celebrating its second birthday. Given the number of cafes, restaurants, and bars that don’t make it past one, that’s pretty good going, and implies they’re doing something right. Especially when you consider that the location, although on a main road, is a little out of the city centre. And especially especially when you see how narrow the frontage is. Two strides and you’ve gone past it, with not much in the way of signage to let you know you’re missing something.
It’s owned and run by Finbar and Movania, whose son, Art Parkinson, played Rickon Stark in Game of Thrones. (This fact is irrelevant; I only mention it because I’m clumsily setting up a side-splitting joke for later). The décor is stripped back and spare, but the atmosphere is warm and cosy, partly because the café is quite small, but mainly down to the cheeriness of the staff.
We couldn’t decide between the soup and the sandwiches so we decided to have both. I went for the sweet potato soup and the tuna toastie, while my brother had the ham and cheese and the tomato and bean. (What’s that you’re eating? It’s bean soup. Yes, but what is it now?)
You get a lot of soup. Which is no good unless it’s nice. Well, you get a lot of really nice soup. Mine was sweet and creamy and light, enlivened by gentle spices, while my brother’s was rich and sharp and full of hearty beans.
They call the sandwiches doorstops, and with good reason. They’re the kind of thing my mum used to call docker butties. Big slices of fresh brown bread, lightly toasted to be first crisp and then soft. Thick, but surprisingly and pleasantly light, though, and packed with filling. My tuna was delicious, and the avocado was delightfully mellow. Maybe there could have been a contrasting flavour, to lift the taste, as the chutney did in my brother’s ham and cheese toastie, but that’s a minor quibble.
We got our puddings to go: a gooey brownie and a slice of lemon-laced Victoria sponge so big you didn’t so much need cutlery and a plate as crampons and a base camp. We were tempted by the other cakes but they lost out in the game of scones. (This is the side-splitting joke I mentioned. It only works if you say it the posh way, or, alternatively, if you pronounce thrones as throns, which I doubt anyone does.)
In a way, it’s just an ordinary café. It has a short menu of three or four sandwiches, two soups, a salad, and a selection of cakes, as well as teas and coffees, all written up on a blackboard next to a Pukka Pies hot cabinet that doesn’t have any pies in it.
But it’s ordinary in a very special kind of way. The atmosphere is lovely, the food is lovely, the staff are lovely. You can go in there by yourself for a quick bite to eat at one of the tiny tables for two, or you can sink into one of the big leather sofas and linger for as long as you like, and not just because the sofas are so deep and low you can’t get up. It feels like a local, and everybody needs a local like this.
THE BILL
Tomato and three bean soup £3
Sweet potato and Moroccan spices soup £3
Ham, cheese, chutney, and mixed leaves toasted sandwich £3.50
Tuna, red pepper, and avocado toasted sandwich £3.50
Raspberry Victoria sponge cake £2.50
Chocolate brownie £2.50
Total: £18
