Crusoe’s Cafe-Bar

You queue to order, and at weekends or holidays, the queue can be long. It’s full of families so toddlers abound, all lending a certain air of chaos to Crusoe’s café. But for location it is absolutely unbeatable, situated beach-​wide on one of the most beautiful stretches of sand imaginable, a luminescent place near stunning cliffs and the pretty, quintessentially English town of Tynemouth.
Food is standard English café fare, done well, and service is reasonably fast given how busy the place can get. For what it is, it doesn’t feel like a bargain, but it does feel freshly prepared and portions are very decent.
The single ladies toilet is baffling given how busy it can be and the scale of the place. This isn’t the place to come for seaside peace and quiet of a weekend, but if you, like many of the clientele, are with kids, this place is the perfect companion to an hour’s play on the beach, which is otherwise cut off from the village by an uphill walk.

On a quiet day, I’m sure this place can be a fantastic little gem. However, on the day we went, it was busy! The kitchen couldn’t handle the volume of customers which compromised the quality of both our food and our experience.
I’d recommend coming here for a hot drink and a cake. Avoid the kitchen and the hassle that comes with it.
Also, they have wifi, however don’t offer it to customers.

What a lovely place to relax, eat some quality food and cool down on a summers day right on the beach!

Great bacon sandwiches — a tasty treat after a walk on a great beach

This is a proper beach café-​bar, right on the edge of the sand, and you can walk in barefoot straight from the beach. It is furnished with a quirky selection of vintage furniture and hand-​painted murals on the walls, and also has a private room with a boardwalk on to the beach if you want to host a private beach party. Customers are a mix of cool surfer dudes and mums and dads with kids, and even in winter it attracts a loyal following of customers. Tynemouth beach hosted the World Surf Championships a couple of years ago, so there’s quite a surf vibe in the area. Don’t look for Crusoe’s from the road — it really is on the beach. You have to take the sloping driveway that is opposite the Grand Hotel to get to it. We like it a lot.