Gilmore Girls has Luke’s Diner, Frasier has Cafe Nervosa, and Schitt’s Creek has Cafe Tropical. The spunky restaurant becomes a central location in the clever comedy as a place of comfort for the Rose family as they try to make sense of their much less affluent lifestyle over plates of bizarre food. Much like its owner Twyla Sands, there’s no air of pretense at Cafe Tropical, only acceptance, nestled in the quaint town of Schitt’s Creek.
Other than the Rosebud Motel, the Roses spend much of their time at the exotically themed restaurant, discussing their connection to the small town between sips of Twyla’s unique smoothies. From the enormous menus to the fact that Twyla seemed to be the only server, fans began to notice certain things that didn’t add up about it, but one thing was for sure; Cafe Tropical served up a little something for everyone, and a big helping of joy.
10 Why Is It The Only Restaurant In Town?
The series selects a few primary locations to focus on, and one is most certainly the Cafe Tropical, but the decision also makes it seem like it’s the only restaurant in town. Other than a few dive bars on the outskirts of town, it seems like the only place for residents to eat.
It’s the only place that celebrations and special occasions seem to take place, and most romantic gestures end up going down at the Café Tropical. Does Schitt’s Creek not have any other restaurants, or is the Cafe Tropical that popular?
9 Why Is The Food From Everywhere?
Aside from serving the traditional food one might find at a cafe, the restaurant also mentions Mexican, Mediterranean, and Hawaiian items on the menu for a more exotic flavor. How can it possibly incorporate all these different flavor profiles in a town that’s far removed from cities with access to the necessary ingredients?
Aside from incorporating every cuisine ever into its culinary rotation, in an effort to have more dietary options for a wider variety of customers, the menu mentions that “meat can be removed from most items” to make them vegetarian.
8 The Size Of The Menu
Not only does Cafe Tropical serve something from every conceivable corner of the globe, it has a menu to fit all the different dishes in it. It serves brisket next to Hawaiian bread, and lasagna next to omelettes. A customer can get mozzarella sticks and alcoholic drinks, as well as healthy juices (Alexis grabs them often on her morning runs).
For a restaurant with “café” in the name the menus are ginormous. When all four Roses are seated at a table, there’s almost no room for them to open their menus at once, which while incredibly entertaining to watch, makes very little sense for groups hoping to actually dine their unencumbered.
7 The Rose’s Tab
In the first season, the Roses come to the town with barely any assets except the deed, their luggage, and Moira’s wigs. They don’t have any money, and end up opening a tab at the Cafe Tropical, where Twyla graciously gives them a line of credit so that they don’t go hungry.
As the series progresses, sometimes the Roses pay for their food, and sometimes they don’t. It’s not clear how long their tab was kept open, and if it remains open at Twyla’s discretion.
6 The Bill
In Season 2, fans do get to see what the Roses pay at one point for one month’s worth of food; $560. Given Alexis keeps a mini-fridge full of breakfast food and the Rosebud Motel serves a continental breakfast of danishes and coffee, the Roses still enjoy at least two meals a day there, which means four people ordering a total of eight meals a day.
The bill seems exceedingly low for four weeks worth of food. Either some of the meals were paid in cash off-screen, or Twyla severally undercharged them for their meals out of the kindness of her heart.
5 Twyla’s Job
Upon first impression, it seems like Twyla is a woman of many aprons. She is host, server, and bartender. She goes from pouring Mr. Rose his coffee and giving Moira her fruit cup in the morning, to making David and Alexis a questionable cocktail at night.
Later in the series, it’s clear that Twyla has the means to hire more hands. She could make her job -and her life- a lot easier. At one point, she’s so essential to running the place that Johnny has to fill in for her after she breaks her leg.
4 Lack Of Servers
For the majority of the series Twyla seems to be in charge of everything, often flitting around the restaurant as though she isn’t assigned any particular section. When there are any other servers (viewers see perhaps one), they’re quickly shooed away so she can take care of the Roses.
If the Cafe Tropical is the most popular restaurant in town, it seems only natural there would be more servers there to help Twyla with the rushes. Instead, she seems pulled in all directions, despite the ability to hire more staff.
3 Twyla’s Singular Smoothies
Rose Apothecary gets a lot of guff for resembling a pop up shop in New York City, but for some reason no customers bat an eye at the trendy food items included on the Cafe Tropical menu, which might be more at home at a Juice Shack or Orange Julius. Instead of down home country comfort food, it features strange smoothies Twyla concocts on the fly.
In lieu of grits or warm apple pie, there’s Twyla’s “Surprise-Me-Smoothie” and the “Greens-Free Salad”, which seem like the sort of items made for particular palates, not the everyday customers.
2 Twyla’s Ownership
In the final season Alexis learns that Twyla is actually a millionaire, and the Cafe Tropical is hers. She even offers Alexis some funds to start her new life in New York City, but her friend doesn’t feel right taking them.
While this is a touching moment for the pair, and it’s exciting to see Twyla come into her own as a business owner and entrepreneur, the reveal can’t help but color the previous seasons, in which Twyla served the Roses while they spoke about their financial woes the entire time and never once decided to help them.
1 The Décor
Despite being in the middle of a rural small town in Elmdale County, Cafe Tropical boasts beachy murals on all the walls, and drawings of parrots up on the chalk board. There are fake palm trees and birds of paradise flowers around the booths, adding to the ambiance that further recreates a tropical paradise.
Besides the tropical theme, there’s a great deal of brass fixtures and signage that eludes to a 1920s art deco aesthetic, which somehow makes it seem much more like an urban diner than a cafe in the Caribbean.
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