Bergerac Cafe

One of the only cafes by Henderson mall, they are a few others but I haven’t tried them. It is located in the mall between Burger King and an asian takeaway food store. That automatically makes anything in the cabinet look good even though it has clearly been there for more than a couple of days. I remember I decided to catch up with a friend and we needed a bit of privacy so Bergerac was perfect because it had the space upstairs. We decided to get a slice from the cabinet and some hot chocolate. It was such a bad move as we ended up not finishing the slice and half heartedly drinking the hot chocolate.

Bergerac is a food-​court café in Henderson’s Westfield mall. It does well to separate itself from the sticky, noisy, uncleared tables of a generic food-​court by creating an alcove bordered by potted plants. They even provide stools and couches on a privated mezzanine floor overlooking the mall.
Adding to this cafés appeal is a well presented, and well stocked, cabinet of food with generous servings of quiche and pasta. Unfortunately, any establishment claiming to be a café needs to be able to make an espresso. It’s essential. If you (Bergerac) have to ask the customer what they mean by «espresso», I’m not surprised to be served something with crema darker than the tables. A sad way to lose credit.

I used to come here regularly a while ago when I worked nearby. I generally thought it was a good café, with good coffee and reasonably good food. I went back last weekend and got the impression the standards have slipped a bit since then. The food in the cabinet did not look that appealing — I was hungry but nothing was really catching my eye, something that often happens in cafes in Auckland. We ordered a couple of flat whites and went upstairs. One perk of this café is that there is a secluded section upstairs which is a welcome respite from the madness of the mall. The coffees came and there was a big slab of cake with them. We didn’t order this but the woman evidently thought I did when I was browsing. I would have eaten it too but it was a huge slab and it looked like it was going off in the hot weather. In fairness to them, when we told them we didn’t want it they gave us a cash refund. The downside was the coffee was not great — they were big cups but only had one shot of coffee. The result was that the coffees were far too milky and not pleasant to drink.