Lost & Found

Lost & Found is confounding. It’s the destination which defines the Cool School, and which attracts the Too Cool For School types, yet it’s in the centre of Coleraine, instead of the Cathedral Quarter, or Temple Bar, or Covent Garden. Dave and the team talk of their Tribe, but the L&F tribe is a potpourri of individuals, united only by being a tribe of people blessed with good taste, who know that L&F is nothing less than a godsend for the Causeway Coast. But perhaps what is most confounding is the utter lack of self-consciousness about the team, the fact that they are serious people – serious about work, about quality, about aesthetics, about food – who never make the mistake of taking themselves seriously. They simply do what they do, both in Coleraine and in their swoonsome seaside café in Portstewart, and they do it supremely, superbly well. They have that maverick quality enjoyed by the best N.I. artists – Van Morrison; George Best, Seamus Heaney – that ability to do things their own way.