Cafe Feel Oh!

Arlene Tilluckdharry - From Law Books to Creperie Owner

Photo: Andrea De Silva

By Laura Dowrich-Phillips

On Boxing Day 2004, Arlene Tilluckdharry fled loneliness and the mind-numbing cold of northern Canada for the warmth of T&T and the company of relatives. She planned to stay for six weeks, but almost two years later, she's still here.

Not only did she leave her home behind, Tilluckdharry also traded in her career as an attorney specialising in international law for that of restaurant owner or, more specifically, creperie owner.

Tilluckdharry, 36, is the very proud owner of a creperie called Cafe Feel Oh, at Coral Cove Marina, in Chaguaramas.

There, amidst the French-inspired décor of wooden bistro tables, French literature, paintings and posters of French authors Andre Gide and Victor Hugo, Tilluckdharry serves crepes, a thin pancake which, according to Wikipedia, originated in Brittany, France.

Although Cafe Feel Oh has a chef who whips up local dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the crepes are Tilluckdharry's baby and she makes all kinds. There are sweet crepes, filled with chocolate mousse and whipped cream or cherries and savoury crepes filled with mushrooms in wine sauce. There are also crepes with a local twist, filled with either buljol or chicken.

"I always wanted to do something different. In Trinidad everything looks the same, the food is the same: expensive and American." said Tilluckdharry, who opened the restaurant on May 11.

Owning a restaurant like Cafe Feel Oh, short for Cafe Philosophy, has always been Tilluckdharry's dream. And while she enjoys eating, she loves to cook and enjoys seeing people consume her food even more.

Her culinary skills were honed while she was a student in New York. Tilluckdharry, who is originally from Palmiste, San Fernando, migrated to the Big Apple at the age of 21 where she did an undergraduate degree in political science and history with a minor in psychology.

"I have always loved to cook. When I moved to New York I had to cook. I cooked to survive. I realised I was good at what I was doing," she said.

Still, Tillukdharry deferred her restaurant dream to continue her studies, this time, in international law.

She flew to London where she took almost five years to complete her studies. It took her a long time, she said, because she financed it on her own doing side jobs such as waitressing.

"I am an independent spirit. I don't like to rely on anybody. If you have goals and you are ambitious and you want something, you just go for it," said Tillukdharry.

But after working in countries such as Spain, England and Canada, Tilluckdharry said her passion fizzled and she needed a break.

Tilluckdharry took over the current space where her business is housed from some friends from Guadeloupe who first owned it. And since the restaurant's theme was already based on French culture, the best thing to do was turn it into a creperie and introduce Trinis to something new, explained Tilluckdharry, who, after deciding to stay in Trinidad, applied for jobs, but was told she was overqualified. When the opportunity to buy the current space presented itself, she jumped at it.

"I had no bank account, no credit history here. I came and said I will invest money, time and energy in this because I want to do something different in this country," she said.

Her something different has not always been well received. Introducing the crepes concept to locals has been challenging. Her bid to inspire with quotes written on the glass windows has been met with resistance by people who rub them off for no justifiable reason. And, even more painful for the avid reader and book lover, has been the disappearance of the majority of her books, which she had on shelves in the restaurant.

"I had 2,000 books but it is down to 100 now. I don't mind people taking the books, but return some," said Tilluckdharry.

Tilluckdharry's initial intention was to create a place where people could not only eat, but exchange books and spend leisure time reading. While some people do bring books in exchange, they are often not what Tilluckdharry expects.

But she takes it all in stride. A Buddhist, she subscribes to the faith's tenets of compassion and understanding. To stay positive, Tilluckdharry draws inspiration from her 28-year-old sister Paula who is suffering from renal failure and is on dialysis.

"She is the most positive person on the face of the earth," she said.

For more info: visit www.squidoo.com/cafefeeloh or call 729-4998

©2003-2004 Trinidad Publishing Company Limited

Café Life

Jamie Eliot finds enlightenment - or, at least, chocolate crêpes - at a small seaside café


The first time we saw it, the new café didn't have a menu in its glass front, but quotes from Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Hegel. Inside: menacing pictures of Victor Hugo, original editions of Le Petit Journal, a poster covered in quotations from everyone from Chateaubriand to George Sand, with a Rorschach ink-blot in the centre. We saw a brain or a butterflied steak, depending on the angle.

Still relatively new, Café Feel-Oh sells Creole lunches and French crêpes in marina-packed Chaguaramas, near the end of Trinidad's north-west peninsula. Run fleetingly by an itinerant French writer, it's now owned by Arlene Tilluckdharry, a Trinidadian international lawyer and Buddhist.

A long lunch counter is stacked with books. A sort of exchange library: take away what you want, bring in others.

Feel-Oh = Philo = Philosophy.

A philosophy café - no, a Europeanish philosophy café - has washed up on the island's west coast, a far cry from our more famed University of Woodford Square, where prime ministers and vagrants have traditionally voiced their ideas. The crowd is equal parts yachties and marina workers. And yet, the roughish crowd notwithstanding, the clientele seem perfectly relaxed in the immaculate, capital-C cultured premises. Is Café Feel-Oh poised to ruin the centuries-old rep of the tough men of the seas and their hearty wenches? Tilluckdharry is either oblivious or indifferent to the incongruity.

As much as the owner has faith in the café's ability to provide a place for stimulating conversation (and who can deny that a place by the sea is as good as any to start pushing horizons?), we believe we have found something far more important, indeed, rhapsodic, to consider: the crêpe of chantilly cream and chocolate, lounging between pillows of whipped cream and chocolate mousse.

Hello, Epicurus.

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