Review Cafe 39 - Auckland Central

Came with my partner in the morning for breakfast. The food was so good, we got bagels and an omelette. everything was so fresh and put together very well. Jax recommend a whiskey hot chocolate, was not disappointed. SO GOOD. Jax is just amazing. and lovely service too 😻😻😻

Came here to Lucky Table 13 for breakfast and enjoyed a prosciutto + cheese bagel outside in the quiet courtyard. Great service and great food. Would have loved to see what it's like at night time as Cafe 39!

That place just right hit my heart！ fabulous cocktail! Nice music.I just love the vibe here

My friend had the 🥓 buttie and coffee ☕️ deal. I had a large flat white which came in a massive soup cup. 🍵 This was excellent because I was cold and I could warm my hands up😄 We sat in the warmer courtyard outside, which is a real sanctuary, away from the bustle of Ponsonby Road The bacon buttie came in two slices of white toast 🍞 , it was great, with an extra fried 🍳 and tomato sauce. Only $11.50!!! The deal for coffee and buttie was $10 which is a super good deal for an expensive location like this. Personally I am soo over wrestling with the likes of toasted ciabatta which doesn’t absorb the liquid of an egg and is tough on your teeth! I’m also over being charged $4 for an egg. Thank you Lucky Table 13!

Ponsonby roads best kept secret- the owner Rene makes excellent cocktails, and is lovely to chat to. Great place to have a drink after work, whether its outside in the sunny courtyard or inside the beautifully decorated bar room. Highly recommended 🌞🌞

What a great find and dogs welcome too! Awesome service, delicious bacon and egg butty n coffee on Sunday morning and the houndling got a treat! Will definitely be back... cocktails look yum! 👌

Great bacon and egg butty (a proper butty none of this Ponsonby nonsense!) and the best coffee… awesome owner always chatty and friendly. Also the home made sausage rolls are amazing!!

Best place in Ponsonby for brunch and dinner. Lovely back outdoor area, food is awesome and owner is a genuinely great host. Please support this local business. Worth the visit! Big news! Cafe 39 has had a makeover. New bar and new ambiance. Food was dope as usual. Our favourite!

Love this place! Really comfy seats and great food. The person who served us today was super kind and catered to all dietary requirements. Even saw we were trying to take a selfie outside and came took the photo for us! Highly recommend.

We were at the cafe for lunch. The owner who served us was a very nice host and made sure we were well looked after. The food was lovely, nicely presented and yummy. The mushroom on toast was creamy with a very subtle hint of cumin. The coffee wasn’t mine so no comment other than would you look at that froth!

I had the creamy mushrooms ($16) and added an egg on the side ($4). The food was nice, but definitely not the best I've ever had. For what it was, it was overpriced. Really enjoyed the look & feel of the tables/eating area out the back. We got a nice amount of sun while sitting under an umbrella. The waiter was really nice as well. Interesting to try but wouldn't come back.

Service at the best and their coffee made my day. 😊 Chocolate Cake was very delicious 😋. Love to go there. Will be back sure. Thanks for your great coffee.

Went into here to get two ice teas, these were $5.50 each. Okay, we will splash out because ice tea is really nice. What we were given was a coffee cup with three ingredients: Tap water, 3 cubes of ice, Twinings tea bag sitting at the bottom (these are 9c each from Countdown)<br/><br/>Tea doesn't dissolve in cold water, ice tea needs to be made in boiling water and prepared.We essentially paid $11 for two teabags, which were rendered useless by this cafes lack of understanding of what Ice Tea is. No, Ice Tea is not a tea bag sitting in cold water.

Love no 39 have never had a bad experience, great coffee, chilled atmosphere, never hurried out by staff, great coffee awesome veggie breakfast, bacon in Maple is great also.

It was a quite a bad experience visiting this cafe. We went as a group - 6 people, there was no one else when we arrived. I asked politely if we can have some water and cups, the staff totally ignored me for at least 10 seconds - she was just looking down doing her own business while I was standing just in front of her. She said to me after the ignorance, just go to get your own water. Too ruled!

What a pity this place used to be great. It has been a favourite of mine for 20 years but not any more. I ordered a Bacon Eggs Benedict and paid for an extra side of bacon. When my plate arrived with a total of 4 small strips of bacon I asked if they had forgotten the extra side of bacon I had ordered. The owner who served me did not even look, said that they had already put the extra bacon in and walked off. At the end of the meal I quietly let the owner know that I felt it was a pity as 39 had been a favourite of mine for years.  The best he could say was would I like a free drink. I did not take him up on this and will not be going back. Really sad as I think of 39 as a Ponsonby institution.

Been to this cafe about 3 times now and it is always a pleasant experience. Small little cafe but has a nice courtyard area out the back which would be nice in summer. Coffee is good and the food is delicious. Each time I've ordered the blueberry pikelets because they are just so tasty. Definitely worth a visit. Can't wait to go back and try something different. 👍🏼

◾Chilled environment<br/>◾Decent coffee<br/>Popped in here randomly on a rainy sunday.<br/>Decent coffee, quite a small unansuming place but worth a look. <br/>Has an outside courtyard perfect in summer.<br/>We didnt order food, though what we saw looked good.<br/>Would def go back

Cute little restaurant in ponsonby. Good food and friendly service.. Everything was fresh. Outdoor seating is very relaxed. Tasty brownies ;)

You won't regret having a breakfast/coffee/lunch over here as the food is close to perfection and the service is fast and friendly.<br/><br/>I ordered a CBA ( Chicken, brie, avocado, lettuce, tomato with garlic aioli pesto on a toasted focaccia) and it was simply delicious. <br/><br/>Will I come back? - Yes for sure.

Mince on toast was great. The courtyard is amazing and very sunny. Perfect for a lunch or afternoon drink because they're licensed and there's no noise of P Road.

Hey, we like this place! Generous & delicious chicken/brie focaccia, BLT sandwiches and pancakes. <br/><br/>Reasonable food & cheaper than many other cafes.

This cafe has great service and up to standard food. Great for breakfast and brunch. Price wise I paid $20 for bacon eggs ben with a cuppa. Hello it is Ponsonby

Breakfast @ cafe thirty nine . <br/>Blueberry pikelets were amazing!!<br/>They are massive - I couldn't get through it all, could prob share between 2! <br/>Coffee was good too!<br/>Will def return keen to try their tofu scramble

Thirty Nine Cafe is your typical (slightly run down) arty cafe. Their outdoor area, it is bit more arty and funky and great on a sunny day. The cafe could do with a renovation, but as it is, there is an unpretentious, casual charm that we love. They have a couple of large tables out the back which can be communal tables or great for groups. In the weekends, you can find plenty of parking in the parking lot behind the cafe.<br/><br/>We have been coming to Thirty Nine Cafe for over a decade just for their bacon hash. I’ve tried a few other things on their menu but their bacon hash is the best. When I go with friends, we usually all get the bacon hash. Honey bacon, roasted portobello mushrooms, a big hash brown and loads of hollandaise. Very saucy, very good. <br/><br/>They also do great coffee and huge smoothies.<br/><br/>The staff are friendly and efficient. Food and coffee always comes out quickly. The chef always greets us we walk past his kitchen to get to the front or back. It’s nice to see who is so happy at work.<br/><br/>Extremely good value and if lack of renovations means they can pump out great food at great prices, let them never renovate.<br/><br/>If you go to Thirty Nine Cafe please get the bacon hash and say hello to the chef!

One of my most favourite cafe's, have been going to 39 for many years. The coffee and food is delicious and very well priced. The service is always friendly and prompt. The atmosphere is laid back and unpretentious, love the large sunny courtyard out the back. Overall a fantastic café.

This place is excellent. The decor is quaint, homely and unpretentious. The staff are friendly and always happy to see you. I've been going there for over 6 years and have never encountered unfriendly service. They always ask how I'm doing and the chef is always on his game. I've always brought visitors to this place and they love it. I usually take a while to peruse the menu with them but I usually get my favourite dish, which is the Bacon, Hash and Mushrooms with hollandaise. Add some spinach and a poached egg and it is heaven! The courtyard is a great sunny place to relax and the two big tables are perfect for casual get-togethers. Also surprised by the rant about the decor and the nazi comment. I guess if you go in with a negative attitude then you're going to have a bad experience. Sure, there are much fancier places with disingenuous wait staff but this place isn't trying to be that. They always greet you with a smile and the chef is always welcoming as you pass through the open kitchen. LOVE IT :)

Love this place :) <br/><br/>The staff are always extremely friendly and more than happy to stop for a chat and a smile or laugh. The food is always excellent and will always go here over anywhere else. It is very relaxed, welcoming and comfortable. The massive wooden table in the large back courtyard (a rare thing in central Ponsonby) is fantastic to sit with friends and enjoy the sun or read the paper, and if the weather isn't great there is always inside or under the umbrellas. <br/><br/>Surprised by the rant about the decor being dated, yes 39 isn't pretentious or trying to be something it's not. It has great food at a great price with amazing staff.... What more does somewhere need, if its not your place good don't go, just leaves more room to spread out the newspaper or relax with friends over a few fantastic coffees. <br/><br/>HIGHLY RECOMMENDED :)

We’ve walked by this place a number of times and finally decided to give it a try since a couple of friends had mentioned good things about it in the past. Suffice it to say, those individuals will be promptly “un-friended” after our first and last experience at 39.<br/><br/>First off, the entrance area is cramped and dated – 2013 to 39, 2013 to 39, do you read? 1992 called and it wants its swag back. On the bright side, it was a little bit like a trip back in time to a run-down, early-90s tearoom-cum-café conversion hurried through on a miser’s budget. Pity we hadn’t visited for the tragic nostalgia.<br/><br/>Our next impression came courtesy of the serving person behind the counter: think Seinfeldian Nazi soup kitchen with a little less tact and zero panache and you’ll get the idea. Judging by the manner in which she was bossing the other staff around, we assumed she was the owner/manager. Perhaps she was having a bad day, perhaps she just didn’t like the look of our faces, perhaps all that tatty décor was getting her down even more than it was us. Any-who, the conversation went something like this:<br/><br/>“Order here - not sit down,” she said, as we walked in the front door and, apparently, hesitated overly long to risk us actually taking a seat.<br/>“OK, no problem.”<br/>“Why you taking so long for ordering?” she asked, pointedly, after we had mulled the menu-board for no less than 20 seconds.<br/>“Ahh, just a moment.”<br/>“We busy, busy here. Have to order or go behind the queue.” <br/><br/>We didn’t have the heart to point out to her that her queue was only two customers long, including us, but we humoured her and happily stepped aside so that her work keeping the earth turning and the firmament above could go on without any further interruption from us; pesky, paying customers that we are.<br/><br/>Anyway, we eventually managed to place an order, hand over some money and take a seat, with the angry person’s tacit approval this time it seemed – we weren’t barked at again, which was a bonus.<br/><br/>We were forced to wait overlong for our coffees, which were average to middling when they did arrive. In fairness, they were brown and frothy – that still passes for coffee nowadays, right? At least it does at 39. On the bright side, we had the interesting and unique décor surrounds to feast our senses on and ease the passing of the time – oh wait, that was in the alternate reality in which our doppelgangers had visited a proper Ponsonby Road café, offering professional, polite service, food that didn’t taste like prison-slop, and benefitting from a decorator who hadn’t fallen blind, deaf and dumb circa 1992. <br/><br/>Having received our lukewarm, brown milk, we whiled away the time before the arrival of the plated solids pondering the mysteries of the provenance of a café name so nifty as “Thirty Nine”. 39 ways to disillusion a diner? 39 minutes before you need to leave to visit a better establishment? 39 seconds to order your food or a boot up the jacksy? 39 insider tips on how to murder an egg? Or perhaps just the same number as the street address – and how reliably and fittingly underwhelming that is after all.<br/><br/>The food, when it finally arrived (after a further, lengthy wait), was, to be charitable, unremarkable. To be less charitable, which is to say to be a human being with functioning taste buds, the food was execrable. It’s rare to find an eatery in this day and age in Auckland - in Ponsonby no less – capable of dishing up such bland, soggy, and poorly executed meals. My wife had the eggs benedict with bacon and I had the “big breakfast” or whatever other jazzy name (which now escapes me) that the brains-trust behind 39 have decided to apply to that particular monstrosity. <br/><br/>Cheap and nasty are two words that spring to mind. Barely edible are a couple more. Maybe the regular chef called in sick and they had to bribe “Phil the homeless guy from around back” to come in on short notice to chuck some food onto the plates. <br/><br/>We don’t know, and we don’t really care to know, because we won’t be going back. Ever.

It was a OK cafe, we went there for brunch, small at the front but was surprised that it has a big courtyard out at the back. the toilet is a long walk from the cafe, it is located at the back and it was dated. The cakes were OK, it is average for us.

Came here on a quiet Sunday morning to meet my cousin. Our casual coffee date turned into brunch with cake. YUMMO! <br/><br/>We ordered our coffees (Allpress) and a side of lemon cake drizzled with a choice of yoghurt or cream (we picked yogurt) <br/>The cake was moist, warm, fluffy and packed with flavours. It was so good we decided to order some savouries to share. We ended up with the omelette with bacon and avocado. I was given the choice of honey or normal bacon and it came with a nice pesto side. Overall, it was pretty delicious, probably a tad on the bland side (needed cheese!) but for $11.50, can't really complain.<br/><br/>I liked the interior of the place, it was small but the courtyard out the back made up for it. The cabinet food had lots of yummy treats for my next visit.