Craven ‘A’

This is my go to morning spot for a coffee before work. Great Allpress coffee and delicious cabinet food as well as a varied menu. You probably wouldn’t go out of your way to visit this place but if you work in the area its definitely the best spot for coffee. Lots of tables inside and a few outside if you want to read the paper or catch up with a friend before heading back into the office!

Here, the coffee reigns Supreme (although it’s of the Allpress variety ;)).
Service is efficient and friendly. I haven’t tried anything on the non-​beverage side but the menu looks pretty decent. The atmosphere is casual and laid back, a nice break from some of the stuffier café’s in town.
My favourite thing about this place, however, is that they serve their coffee HOT. There’s really nothing like a steaming espresso to perk you up in the morning (I truly dislike lukewarm «hot» drinks. I mean, seriously, what’s up with that?).
The crowd consists mostly of students coming/​going from class (makes sense as Craven is basically smack in the middle of Auckland Uni and AUT), but I don’t mind the student vibe.
A large flat white is $ 4.50, so pretty standard for these parts.

This review is based purely on the coffee alone. If you’re after food, this doesn’t count as I cannot confirm the consistency between their efforts to make good coffee and serve up a cooked breakfast.
I can tell you it is the best coffee you will get that side of Symonds St for many meters. Starbucks just around the corner clearly isn’t eligible and the unbranded black water served up anywhere else in the vicinity isn’t going to cut it.
The beans are Allpress and from the many coffees I have had they, all have been good. Enough said.
The café does have a kitchen menu though and looks promising from the board. A good range of bottled drinks and fresh juices and smoothies are also available with decent seating.
Slightly off the main strip, Craven A is more worthy of your $ 3.50 than the competitors who will charge the same for something that looks like marmite diluted in water.

Craven A is your standard café with a large selection of baps, paninis and slices which all reasonably priced. I had the pork and slaw bap and walnut and caramel slice and both were very tasty. Coffee was also good. It is definitely one of the better lunch places in the uni district.

This coffee shop was once a great place with super fast, good service. The location is perfect for students. The venue is big enough for lunch but not so big its daunting.
Unfortunately, they sold it to a group of Koreans who haven’t been able to keep up the standards. When I say that i mean, sour savoury scones, burnt coffee and dry panini. Time to search for another café around school…

Before there was any decent cafes in the mid city area, I occasionally used to wander up to Craven A, so when I visit it now it has a sheen of nostalgia for more carefree years attached to it, as I imagine it does for all the students that spend their breaks hanging out there and solving several important world issues over one coffee. It’s got more personality than most of the corporate chain places on the campuses, and the food is perfectly fine without blowing you socks off. The muffins are pretty good.
Its name though: it always gets me, to the point where I’m probably now going to spend quite a long time thinking: Craven A? Cravin’ a? Is Craven A the name of the owner? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

The good Uni Local that has been there ever since I can remember. I wonder how many countless students have hurried through its doors or wagged a class there. A lot.
It’s not the fanciest or best of cafes but it’s all that’s around that area and when you need a caffeine hit for a late night, you don’t really care what it tastes like, you just want it to do its thing.
They do have a good food menu. Not that I could ever really afford it. But I could afford their filo pastry parcels. They are packed will yum feta and spinach and go down a treat.
I don’t think I once went in there without receiving a huge smile from their staff, even when there were fifty hungry, stressed and tired students filling their café. They were always calm, collected and delivered the goods when we needed them. It’s also a nice change from the horrid Subway next door. I don’t think I can touch another one of those sandwiches. Ever.

There are a lot of cafes around the uni area. And fair enough, the place is filled with either fresh high school graduates starting their trip to addiction with iced frappes, to PHD students frantically downing long blacks. Craven A is one of the better options in the area, with slightly cheaper prices on coffee then most and a fairly decent looking range of cabinet foods. There breakfast menu is also pretty extensive and reasonably priced, with some options other then the standard bacon and eggs café fare. They serve up coffees quite quick here, so even if there is a line wait around and you will probably get your fix in five minutes.

I’ve never understood the name, which made me feel paranoid that I was missing some cool reference the whole time I was at AUT. But apart from that, this is one of the better cafés around the universities — cool without being try-​hard, comfortable without being generic. It also manages the balance of being cheap enough for students to frequent without being a scum-​hole (which a few of the places on campus at Auckland Uni fail at, unfortunately). I’m no expert on coffee so to me the coffee here is fine, and really — how many 18 year olds are experts on coffee? Only a few, and they can piss off back to the business school, thanks. Basically this place has found itself a niche where it can sit below Revel and above Esquires, and this suits its customer base just fine.

A well-​known local haunt amongst Auckland University and AUT students, Craven A’s is a cute little café near the corner of St Paul and Symonds streets, with coffee that my friend’s mother swears by (I have to admit, it is pretty good). They have a cabinet filled with goodies that aren’t too expensive — I got a rather large and filling filo pastry for $ 5.50 — and they also have a reasonably priced menu on the wall as well. Craven A isn’t the flashest place — old wooden chairs and tables to sit down at, and when I asked for relish with my filo they handed me a plastic tomato filled with tomato sauce, however I think this all adds to the alternative student-​aesthetic of the place (whether it is intentional or not) and definitely makes for a place I’ll come back to.

Come rub shoulders with the hipsters and art students occupying Elam and AUT. A local hangout during uni times for these coffee hungry fiends, it get’s incredibly busy during lunch, coffee’s aren’t terrible and the food is all cooked on premises. A family business most of them are pretty friendly. I wouldn’t recommend their chocolate cake (had a strange jelly texture to it) but the walnut caramel slice is a tasty sugar hit. It’s in a good position to soak up most of the day’s sun that is glorious after 2 hours discussing people’s art cooped up in the studio. Look out for the Subway next door.