Yum Yum Tree Cafe has recently launched its intriguing new ‘Zeitgeist’ breakfast and lunch menu. French-born owner Gilles Gohlke explains, ‘Zeitgeist means spirit of time, people coming together creating a culture right here, right now. We believe that living consciously, eating healthily, shopping locally and seasonally is the key to community success and wellness in our regional economy. This in turn keeps jobs alive and allows the community to flourish.’ Inspired by this sense of community spirit Gilles is planning to change the cafe name to Zeitgeist.
‘We want to create a feeling of belonging,’ says Gilles. Frodi, his fiancée, has collected cheerful upcycled décor and artisan’s trinkets for the revamped interior. There’s a sense of hanging around your living room with no rush to leave. Toddlers are made welcome with a tented boat play corner and there’s homely new bench seating outside with ample dog-friendly space.
The Zeitgeist menu is influenced by the team’s Italian, French, Austrian and German roots. Sensational seafood creations and mountainous burgers star with vegan selections, healthy juices and indulgent mega fries.
A Mullumbimby butcher creates German sausages to Gilles’s great-grandfather’s recipe. He perfected them after rigorous taste-testing on ravenous labourers 100 years ago. Great-grandpa’s gourmet pork sausages, paired with crispy macaire potato, caused an 83-year-old gent to exclaim, ‘That’s the best meal I’ve had in a long time, and I’ve had a few.’
‘Fresh organic ingredients are the key to delicious flavour,’ says Gilles, ‘but we also care about the welfare of animals.’ They pay 40c extra per egg to get nutritious Possum Creek open-range eggs from ethically treated pasture-fed hens. No wonder their scrumptious Boardriders Omelette is touted as a ‘breakfast for champions’.
Impassioned by heart-warming European cuisine, community spirit and concern for our creatures, Zeitgeist deserves to thrive.
50 River St, New Brighton. Open 7am to 3pm, 7 days a week. Reservations Ph 0403 160 663. BYO. Live music Sundays from 10am.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
