Berkelouw Café 1812

The waitress was on a loud phone call while wearing earphones in her language throughout my entire visit—from the moment I arrived until I left just non stop. When I asked about the cakes at the counter, she didn’t hear me, and when she responded, she seemed annoyed. She continued chatting even while serving food and showed no consideration for the guests, especially those working in the space. It was very unprofessional and disrespectful, and it completely ruined the experience.

One of my favorite book stores in the world! The bookstore is amazing and the cafe on the first floor is the perfect place to take your laptop and work for a few hours! Great coffee!!! The secondhand books also are an amazing collection! What a gem in Sydney!

While the Cafe is really beautiful and charming and comfortable around all those books and the windows with natural sunlight, I find the stuff very friendly but not professionally trained. You can notice that in different ways of their behaviour. They chit chat loudly at the Cafe bar and have meetings in the Cafe socialising, which is unprofessional. I think though the taste of the Coffee is very nice and the fact you can use internet (wifi) and stay as long as you wish to use it and the fact that nobody pushes you to order ( as it is the case in many other Cafes) is fantastic.
I really like going there. It is a relaxed place to chill as well and read some books.

This is one of the only places in Sydney with free wifi for as long as you want. Plus they have some amazing books for sale, and a great little cafe for superb coffee, and a light snack. Only reason I can't give 5 stars is some of the workers are a bit rude. Whenever I ordered something I felt like I was inconveniencing them.

This is one of my favourite cafes in Sydney. The staff are lovely and there's free wifi. The spanakopita is quite tasty and I love that they're open til 9pm most nights. You can come here and just be, without being bothered. I adore it.

I came to Cafe 1812 (on the second floor of Berkelow Books) for wine with a friend after work one weekday to catch up on the goss, so it was relatively quiet - though I made it a bit rowdier as I'd had a rough week by Tuesday and am a cheap date.

The space is intimate, with some typical bookstore, deep, vintage professorial-esque chairs, though there are a number of more standard cafe tables and chairs throughout for people who actually were looking to be productive.

Their wine selection was good and the prices reasonable. While I have a long-standing love of bookstores and think having a wine bar in a bookstore is a perfect concept, I think the biggest con of this for me is that it was not exclusively a wine bar. It's a cafe with wifi that happens to serve wine. I felt occasionally out of place, drinking here - sometimes felt like I was in a library, like I had to be really quiet (not like I was particularly loud, but...). The space itself was quite echo-y. I felt somewhat self-conscious here. Or maybe that was because I was drinking on a Tuesday.

Regardless, while I like Cafe 1812, I think the next time I come it will be for the cafe and books side of things rather than the bar side of things.

Great space overall either for working on a weekday or stopping in pre or post-movie (Palace Verona is next door) at busier times.

Lots of tables down the back though the main ones are the bench overlooking Oxford St which makes for great people watching pretty much any time of day or night.

Decent coffee (Campos) and a good selection of food and wine too.

Just a few cons letting them down ...
- wifi is free but alas most of the time useless - incredibly patchy and dropping out all the time (if looking to discourage the working office at peak times, reckon a voucher system or timetable access would be a better idea)
- Newspapers seem to work on a random donation basis ... if they're truly aiming for an '1812' coffee house vibe then the daily papers would be handy (maybe this is a bit petty given old books can be read there!)
- Up until recently plates, cups etc used to get left on tables a while ... seems pretty good lately though!

Nice atmosphere to do some work on the computer or catch up with some friends. However, internet hasn't been working for over 4 days now. Would be nice if they can try to get it fixed.

Great place to stop for a bite, sit in the cafe and work kn you laptop, surrounded by books!