Olaf Growald
The Hasan sisters — left to right, Noor, Sidra, Faryall and Alina — at their unique Café 4.
Depending on when you go to Café 4, you may have the option to get a macaron, a dainty sandwich, or a freshly made plate of biryani.
So goes a typical day at this unique bakery and restaurant on Park Hill Drive, near TCU. Run by a quartet of sisters, the café offers sweets and pastries in the morning and afternoon; a lunch and brunch menu with sandwiches, salads, and soups; and, once a week, a full Indian dinner.
Breakfast items include buttery croissants, with or without scrambled eggs, red onions, bacon, turkey pastrami and chipotle mayo. At lunch, there are turkey, chicken salad, and roast beef sandwiches, plus a panini with smoked chicken drizzled with cheese roux, Moroccan kabobs, and breaded chicken stewed in tangy and spicy curry sauce served over a bed of cool cabbage.
Olaf Growald
Aloo keema, a Pakistani dish made with ground beef with potatoes and served with naan bread
In addition, on Thursday nights, the sisters pay tribute to the food tied to their Muslim heritage by hosting a full-scale Indian dinner (in these COVID times, the sisters are offering the dinners to-go and by request only).
Oh, and there are sweets — cookies, brownies, scones, petit fours, cupcakes, and extra-large slices of cake.
“It’s a hybrid of everything we love, all the kind of food we love, from Indian food to Asian cuisine,” says Noor Hasan, one of the four owners.
Olaf Growald
Macarons
Each sister is involved in the restaurant, in ways big and small. A mother of three, Noor, 34, dreamed up the concept and lassoed her three sisters, one by one, into going into business with her. Also, a mother of three, Alina, 33, designed the restaurant’s vintage-chic interior.
Thirty-year-old Faryall, mother of two, handles the marketing and social media. Finally, Sidra, the youngest at 21, is a classically trained pastry chef who graduated from the International Culinary Institute in New York City in 2018.
“Out of all of us, she’s the one who really knows how to cook,” Noor laughs. “We all have a passion for food and for cooking, but Sidra’s the one who has really guided our menus and given the restaurant an identity.”
Olaf Growald
Chicken salad sandwich
In a way, Café 4 is picking up where its predecessor, Park Hill Café, left off. A local favorite for 15 years, the café drew the ladies who lunch crowd and those with a sweet tooth, but also diners looking for something with a bit more weight to it. Orange-glazed Cornish hen was a café favorite.
“That’s our whole thing, too. We’ve gone out of our way to not be the same as other breakfast and lunch cafés,” Noor says. “We’ve tried to stick to cuisines and items you might not find at other cafés near here. You can get salmon Benedict here, but we also make a great plate of Turkish eggs.”
Café 4 offers another unique twist on café food: All of their food is halal food, meaning there is no pork or pork byproducts. “We have ham, pepperoni, and bacon; it’s just all-beef,” Noor says. “Basically, these are the healthier versions.”
Olaf Growald
Samosas
Although Sidra has the most experience in the food industry, it was Noor who dreamed up the restaurant. For a time, she had been running a macaron business out of her home, and she decided to expand it, eventually bringing aboard her three siblings.
This wasn’t their first brush with running a café, however.
“Here’s the funny thing — there was a game the four of us used to play together when we were little kids. We ran our own café,” Noor says. “We’d make desserts and mac and cheese and drink make-believe coffee. We didn’t even remember, until after this place was open, that we used to play that game. We used to do this exact same thing when we were little kids. How cool is that?”
Olaf Growald
Cakecicles
Café 4 - 2974 Park Hill Drive, cafe4.net
