The Rude Shipyard

Gem of a place, fantastic food and drink and a lovely atmosphere.
Very intimate layout but quirky with lovely service.

It was raining so hard that I needed to get somewhere dry. I popped into this café and ordered a flat white and a piece of Guinness cake. The first flat white the guy didn’t give me, he said it hadn’t come out so well. Find somewhere to sit he said and I will bring you another one. The second one, well, it was fine but nothing to write home about, so I’m telling you instead.
The cake? I ordered it on the strength of a review here on Unilocal.It wasn’t the greatest cake ever. Hell, I’m not even sure that it was the best Guinness cake I’ve ever had, despite it being my first ever piece. It was just a bit odd.
So why a four star review? I really liked this place. Unhurried. Quaint. Good service. Happy.
As well as a café it’s a secondhand book store. An eclectic mix of titles. Some obscure stuff, but popular titles too, with some first edition Harry Potters in the kids’ section.
When I’m next passing by, I will stop by, for sure.

Lovely little café/​bookshop. Excellent brunch, coffee by the mugful.

I love this place; it’s one of my favourite places in Sheffield. The food is always superb no matter what it is and the service is quite special. A lovely quaint place with loads of teas on offer and BYO nights on a Thursday. The Guinness cake is the best cake I have ever tasted.
Great veggie options and often a vegan option too.

Super tasty food, brilliant ambience, but it an sometimes take a while to be served. That’s being said, they do host ukulele Sunday’s, which has to be the greatest day of the month.

This little café — and I mean little, there isn’t much room to sit despite its two floors — is amazing, but it’s definitely not run as a tight ship. (For instance: at the end of our meal, they had no idea what we’d purchased so we had to go back and re-​count everything for them.)
But it’s just so damn eclectic. There was a banjo event happening (as in, open mic banjo Sunday when everyone just showed up with banjos) and we ended up sitting at a table with two of folks. By the end of the day, there were six of us at this TINY table, laughing and joking.
Come on. That’s café culture.
Suck it up and go. And be friendly.

Lovely new addition to Abbeydale Road’s cafes — the Rude Shipyard is also a second-​hand book shop, has it’s own reading group, and puts on music some evenings. I’ve tried their coffee (strong, but good) and cakes (including a delicious moist apple and ginger cake with ice-​cream) — their lunches sounded very convincing as well. Limited table space means you may well end up sharing, especially if you’re upstairs, but that only adds to the charm of the place.