Bar Food opened about three years in Habersham Village with an offbeat mix of small plates and drinks.
Owners Johnny Baker and Paula Letcher have now launched another business in the same strip — the appropriately named Coffee Deli.
Coffee Deli takes the place of the former Ogeechee River Coffee Co. at 4517 Habersham St., next to a retail location of River Street Sweets.
It’s a bright, airy space with a menu and hours (6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day) that should appeal to a variety of customers.
Coffee Deli is getting its coffee from locally owned Cup to Cup Coffee Roasters, but my first trip to the new spot was for a lunch.
The excellent Reuben ($9) was piled with half a pound of beef. The menu offers a variety of salads, hot and cold sandwiches, and other standard deli fare.
So there’s yet another dining option in Habersham Village, which I’ve praised regularly in this column as a great example of the integration of retail into a primarily residential neighborhood.
Perils on the road?
On Saturday, crossing Park Avenue with the right of way after leaving the Forsyth Farmers’ Market, a group of us had to stop for a driver who glided by us without even so much as a glance.
Later, as I was heading south in the bike lane on Habersham Street on my way to Coffee Deli, a driver staring at a cellphone whizzed past.
On that same stretch, two cars coming from the cross streets made rolling stops before turning right. Another driver was just sitting at a stop sign as he scrutinized his cellphone.
On my way back north, a driver pulling out of a lane stopped with the front half of his car entirely blocking the bike lane.
Later that evening, as I was riding my bike north, a car in front of me came to a dead, inexplicable stop in the middle of Bull Street at Duffy Street.
Immediately after that, I watched a woman execute a three-point U-turn. In the middle of Whitaker Street.
A little later, I was in a crosswalk in Johnson Square when a driver, also looking at his phone, failed to stop.
And you know what? It’s all good. None of those drivers did anything that made me feel in danger at all.
Regular walkers and bike riders around town are so accustomed to such behavior from drivers that we rarely mention it.
But to hear some holier-than-thou drivers around town, you’d think that Savannah was populated by pedestrians leaping from roadside bushes and cyclists beaming down from alien starships.
City Talk appears every Sunday and Tuesday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net and http://www.billdawers.com. Send mail to 10 E. 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.
