Stratford’s new cafe which is named after a dog
A NEW café in Stratford is the ‘pawfect’ place for dog lovers who are into art and movies.
Kaya Chiang, who launched the coffee shop in Union Street last week, is an artist and film-maker. The café is named after Kaya’s cavachon puppy Mr Odie, a cavalier King Charles spaniel and bichon frise cross. And in turn, Mr Odie’s name comes from the beagle in the Garfield cartoons.
Visitors can choose from a range of speciality teas including honeycomb Japanese green tea and oolong tea plus Kyoto matcha latte, several speciality coffees, hot chocolate and cream soda.
Kaya was born in Taiwan and grew up in Japan before coming to the UK at 19. She studied film-making in London, and is a freelance illustrator and artist.
She used to sell artwork, collectable vintage typewriters and books at markets around the country and, just before opening Mr Odie’s, co-ran a pop-up coffee stand out of a vintage horse-box.
Now she plans to host regular movie nights at the café. The first, last week, was a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s film noir Vertigo – and she wants the café to become a hub where artists, film makers and movie fans can hang out and collaborate.
Kaya, who lives in Banbury, said: “In Japan there are many art cafés, which I really like. When I was young, I would go and watch movies in these cafés, and I want to recreate something similar here.”
She added: “When we did the horsebox coffee stand I enjoyed it a lot, especially meeting new people and then I started to think it might be better to have a permanent location.
“We started looking around and decided the best location for an art café was Stratford, because of all the culture here.”
Although Kaya’s café is the domain of Mr Odie, the nearby cat café has nothing to fear as Kaya is also a massive feline fan and owns three cats, as well.
She said: “Last year I did a lot of artwork and met lots of nice, good artists so am looking forward to running collaborative art and film-making workshops from the café. And I’d like to exhibit other artists’ work, as well as my own.”
Mr Odie’s is open every day of the week, usually from 8.30am to 4pm.
