By Rose Graner
Entertainment Editor
Gum Tree, located just atop the final westbound stretch of Pier Ave. in Hermosa, prides itself on offering its patrons an organic, healthy and well thought-out selection of items.
Gum Tree is a difficult place to pin down. It features both a café and a small, Anthropologie-esque shop. It is difficult to tell which aspect of the establishment is secondary to the other, if one is. When patrons leave Gum Tree, though, it is the café that calls them back again.
A surprisingly exotic range of options is presented to customers—for instance, one of the regular breakfast sandwiches offered combines apricot preserves and brie cheese on a baguette. Specials include “Aussie meat pies.” Even the childrens’ menu features a toasted Nutella-and-banana sandwich. The small number of baked goods includes traditional Australian lamingtons (essentially yellow cubes of sponge cake dipped in chocolate and rolled in coconut).
This already peculiar range of items is often supplemented with specials that incorporate seasonal ingredients. These items are served because they are fresher or more lush during the time period and not just because they seem like “fall” or “summer” foods. Soups, for instance, often feature veggies that are in season but are not typically evocative of that season.
The café is co-owned by husband-and-wife team Will and Lori Ford. Lori Ford is a southern California local; Will Ford is Australian. Their lengthy backstory is somewhat enviable and, from the way their website tells it, just adorable enough to make them characters from 2003’s this-side-of-sickeningly-cute film “Love Actually.”
Will Ford co-opened Eight Mile Creek, a two-star (read: pretty darn good) New York restaurant and one of the only ones with a heavy focus on regionally Australian cuisine. As a result, patrons get the idea upon entering the cafe that the owners definitely know what they’re doing.
Gum Tree appears polished and professional and features a light, airy ambiance at all times.Gum Tree, although somewhat pricey (an average meal runs $6-$10 and does not include a drink or a side) is entirely worth customers’ time and money. It is just exotic enough to be fascinating without being intimidating and it proves an excellent alternative to the now old-hat go-to for “exotic” food Crème de la Crepe.
The establishment’s comfortable atmosphere and small but high-quality range of pastries and caffeinated beverages allow it to function as a small coffee shop as well as a café, although it does not come close to rivaling the across-the-street coffee and muffin haven Java Man.
In Hermosa Beach, as in most areas with small, region-specific cultures, concerns about a mythical, unidentified rough crowd coming in and tearing the place to shreds are rivaled only by an unreasonable fear that anything new will destroy local heritage. There is a kind of constant hand-wringing over the so-called “direction” the town is going in. Some residents tried to block the opening of a tattoo shop because it would bring in, according to some locals’ testimonies, “a certain, unwanted crowd.” Others took the closing of long-running clothing shop Re:Style as a personal affront.
Gum Tree is proof that the former concern can, for a time at least, be assuaged. The Aussie-inspired, gentile café exists in harmony with classic, local Hermosa establishments like Big Mike’s and no gigantic cultural upheavals have occurred as of yet. Gum Tree (238 Pier Avenue) is open Tuesday-Sunday 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
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