Tree Hugger Café & Crafts — Restaurant in Đồng Hới

Tree Hugger is hands down a five-star offering. I'm a grumpy guy so I wish it (base floor) wasn't positioned at the main road. Upper floor best for this reason and nice crows-nest vantage point of beautiful, clean & green boardwalkish promenade on the other side of the avenue.

Owner, German lady, very low key and pleasant while doing great hands-on management and table serving. She took time to answer a couple new-in-town questions.

Love the decor, though I've seen it before, but still I like the very artisan-meets-rustic touch. Interesting balance of mellow local and foreign cafe goers.

Lovely, quality, tasteful handicraft at solid prices.

I ordered latte and omelette which was simply, beautifully presented on a plate with tomato & cucumber slices and extra large sesame seed burger-type bun.

This encourages the diner, and I played along, to construct a well stuffed omlette and veg sandwich. Fresh complimentary fruit morsels for a classy finishing touch.

Decent latte and food taste combined with relaxed sophisticated simplicity made me smile and pay the owner a well deserved compliment about all things Tree Hugger.

Next time I'll ask for the option of a stronger latte and baguette or venture further into their...

I get why people like this cafe, I can see they have put a lot of effort into their food and fit out.

Unfortunately what I can’t forgive is the cardinal sin of heating the milk in an iced latte. For those that don’t drink iced lattes, you’re meant to use cold milk but some cafes that don’t know that steam/heat the milk which as a result means all the ice melts immediately and you’re left with a lukewarm watered down coffee with no ice. I’m presuming this happens because they think you need to make a hot latte and add ice but I don’t understand why anyone would think that it makes sense to basically get heat up cold milk just to try cool it back down (and water down the coffee in the process).

I did tell the staff about this via google translate but they didn’t do anything about it, like make another correctly.

The pork burger was okay. It was more of a Vietnamese pork sandwich than any kind of burger I’m familiar with. They make the bun in house which I appreciate but it was fairly dense kind of like sourdough.

All in all, this cafe does try and I think if I ordered something else my experience may be different but based on what I received I think...

The place is really cute and kitchy. The menu is adorable with a ton of explanations. I wish the menu would have explained that you have to go up to the counter to order. Someone sat us and brought us menus without letting us know that you have to get up to order so we just waited... it wasn't until the restaurant started to empty that we saw the little sign at the counter to order there.

The food was good and portions are generous BUT, there is nothing that cuts your appetite more as a vegetarian than ordering vegetarian spring rolls and taking a huge bite of pork instead. When ordering I specifically said VEGETABLE spring rolls and even pointed to the item on the menu. They also brought my boyfriend the wrong drink as well even after he also pointed to his order... the drink they brought was from a completely different page, so they just weren't really even looking or listening. I really don't think communication is the issue as much as a lack of paying attention when people order.

The ambiance is very cute and the fruit was fresh but being fed meat as a vegetarian in a restaurant called tree hugger wasn't...