Sappho Books Cafe & Wine Bar

My favorite place for a tea or a nice glass of wine! Take a book or come with some friends, you won’t be disappointed.
My only little regret is that there is no WIFI.
But anyway, the staff is really nice and the terrace is really cozy!

If you love books and lattes this is the place to be. It is filled with mostly used books and great finds at that. For Australia the prices are rather cheap for a bookstore, there is a wide variety and the books are usually ranging from 7 AUD to as much as 11 AUD per book (this is how much I have paid anyways). I have bought a lot of travel books here used, also language books too, great place for these in particular because they tend to be very overpriced new. They also have a really cool music room upstairs with a piano and sheet music to buy if thats your interest.
Their café is very cool, and outdoors but still connected in the back to the bookstore building. In general the staff is nice but don’t expect much besides after you paying for your coffee they bring it to a table for you. They also have empty water pitchers you can take off of one table and also glasses to take for having water at your own table. Also beward bathroom is outside… so as you can imagine creepy crawling friends will be joining you for your after coffee pee break.

This is my ultimate café! A mixture of wine, coffee and books! My ultimate favourite! If u love all three, then this is the place for u!
Went here for the first time yesterday. It took me a good hour and a half just looking around all the shelves filled with books! I was so overwhelmed. I like how there’s a music practice room for all u music artists out there! I doubt it ever gets used, cz I don’t think a lot of people know about it!
Books are cheap to buy and there’s a wide variety!
I think the only thing I don’t like about it is that it doesn’t have wifi or FREE wifi and I didn’t like a particular sign that was put up in the eating area. Something about how u can’t sit down studying/​reading or on ur laptop during weekends as it gets busy and only used for ‘paying customers’. I completely understand this, HOWEVER, if u have a bookstore in ur café u have to expect that people are going to sit down and READ! Where do we read? More people are going to visit the café on weekends too as they have time during their busy week at work to want to sit down, relax, read a book and drink a glass of wine! They need to accommodate this.
Maybe a suggestion could be have the downstairs area and maybe open up an area purely for reading, studying, surfing the net! I don’t know, just putting shit out there but other than that, I enjoyed my first experience

The bookshop-​café combination is a real winner. Nice food, good coffee and a funky grunge courtyard round out this place as a favourite. They serve wine and beer from 10am. Classic Glebe.

Fabulous Venue, indoor and outdoor dining, drinking, relaxing. Delicious simple tapas, at reasonable prices. Service is always lovely– are you too cold, would you like a blanket?

Sappho *should* be a dream come true. A bookshop + café, with a great outdoor seating area. AND they’re licenced.
Books + Coffee + Wine = Bingo!
What went wrong for me?
Well, I really objected to the kind of rude signage suggesting that certain tables were NOT for reading and studying, or something along those lines. Clearly, Sappho don’t want to encourage people to order one coffee and then stay all day reading and using their laptops, taking up table space, all for $ 3. I get that.
But they’re going about it the wrong way. This sort of signage makes people (well, me) self-​conscious about drinking a coffee while reading a book. If I do that — god forbid — am I in trouble for «studying»? How often do I have to go up and order something else, just to make it clear that I’m not taking up a table that «good paying customers» should be getting?
Unnecessary signage with house rules can be very problematic, and make people feel quite unwelcome.

Sappho is my one constant staple in Glebe. It has the perfect amount of cool (set in a second hand book shop with a graffiti clad courtyard), but none of the hipster attitude. It’s perfect.
The coffee and tea are consistently good and this is probably why I am still a regular customer after all these years (5 and counting). The menu is brief but rewarding. The fruit salad and banana bread both rate a mention and there is a selection of cakes and pastries in the front cabinet. Sappho is always crazy busy on Saturdays so come mid-​week to experience its laid back charm properly.
Shockingly I haven’t been here for wine and tapas yet but I plan on changing that soon. Let’s hope Sappho is as good by night as it is by day.

Sappho is a second-​hand bookstore, café, and a tapas and wine bar. It’s a really cute little space on Glebe Point Road packed with a great collection of books and features a great courtyard out the back. Formerly a youth centre, the graffiti has been embraced and turned into art.
A fair chunk of the menu is vegetarian, with many vegan dishes on offer too, and they only use free-​range chicken and eggs. While the café is open 8.30am-6.30pm Monday to Tuesday, 8.30−11pm Wednesday to Saturday and 9am-6.30pm Sundays, the wine bar serves cocktails and tapas from 6pm-​11pm Wednesday to Saturday. The fairylights are switched on, music plays and the atmosphere is great. Enjoy a selection of beers, wines or a sweet cocktail and admire your surroundings. Or, read a book.

‘It’s the two hundredth anniversary of Sense & Sensibility!” the owner exclaimed with almost personal pride.
I remember when Sappho first opened further up Glebe Point Road, long before the present tres cool café and tapas bar incarnation. There was a chaise longue and the crime/​horror section was called the ‘Whip and Chain Room’. The same vibe continues in this gorgeous bookstore now, with handwritten signs delineating the sections, ‘butchered book cards’ and badges for sale, a dog behind the counter.
The staff are lovely, the books well-​organised and well-​priced, and there’s the lovely rickety stairs to climb. And I’m not even going to go into the café section with this review. On this visit I bought a forgotten classic by a couple of sisters who wrote themselves out of poverty about a hundred years ago. Can’t get that on Kindle (spit). Time to throw a Jane Austen appreciation party, methinks. Sangria and hardbacks at Sappho’s?

Two of my essential daily needs, books and coffee are fulfilled at this one Gleeb location. The store carries an abundance of used books where you can often find hard to find and out of print titles. The café is located in the unexpected courtyard in the back of the store. It’s a café in the daytime and wine and tapas bar in the evening. I’ve only been here during the day, and their coffee and banana bread are the best in the area. There’s even a six-​week barista course if you are really serious about your coffee. The café gives me a good location to work since it hosts a large number of students and university staff. The food is really good and they serve a number of different sandwiches, wraps, breakfasts, salads and a number of tapas. I definitely recommend this place. I’m also interested in checking it out one night for wine and tapas and maybe even a little poetry.

Having not been to Sapphos in a while, I headed there unsure as to what I was in for. Previously my favourite café in Sydney, it had somehow slipped form my consciousness when I moved suburbs. After a while, I convinced myself that there had to have been a reason that I hadn’t gone back and without even realising, I’d erased it from my memory.
So, after a trip to Glebe Markets, I walked past Sapphos and something sparked inside of me. A hidden, stifled desire whispered to me and before I knew what my feet were doing I was following them inside my forgotten friend. Making my way through the shelves of second hand books, I passed the busy counter and walked down the grafittied open-​air corridor to the leafy courtyard were tables stood surrounded by people, shadowed in the dappled sunlight, an easy breeze floating through the air. Familiarity crept across my chest in a warm tingle and as I moved towards an empty table on the terrace, giant grafittied faces smiled down at me from the walls and I smiled back at them, happy to be home.
Sappho is famed for its fantastic coffee (Toby’s Estate beans) and hosts its own Coffee School run by Steve: manager, barista and all round good guy. Their little kitchen churns out a limited but delicious breakfast menu (avo toast and bircher museli both worth a try), as well as offering Black Star pastries and Whisk and Pin biscuits. Come nightfall, the back courtyard is lit up with fairy lights and as tapas and wine pop up on your table, it’s like a rooftop Secret Life of Us shindig, surrounded by good company, chilled (and occasionally live) music, and that sweet air of summertime.
So, whether it’s for breakfast under the ferns, a rainy day coffee with a pre-​loved book, monthly poetry readings, or beers, wine and tapas, Sapphos is a reinstated favourite.

I was drawn to this bookstore due to an eccletic poetry reading night, free I wandered up the 2 flights of stairs to find an intimate group in a dimly lit room reading and listening to poetry. Much like you’d imagine or expect from 19^th century Europe. The wooden floors and walls are lined with 2^nd hand books in superb condition. You can lose yourself amidst the editions of science, self help music, philosophy — if only the information was infused through the air, no it does make you feel smart being in here, like you’ve done something right. There is an air of mystery to this shop a delicate balance of old and new past and present.

If you thought Sappho Books was just a bookstore, like I did for so many years wandering past, then you’d be wrong, just like I was, for so many years as I wandered past.
I thought, ‘Oh yeah, book shop.‘
Then one day, a friend of mine said to me, ‘Want to go to Sappho books and grab a coffee?’ Did she mean, ‘Do you want to grab a coffee and then head to the books?’ or do the two simultaneously? Concurrently? What?
As it turns out and as most people probably know, hidden out the back of the small shop front is a massive courtyard and café which serves coffee, food and various drinks.
The ambience here is relaxing and the open roof allows for a nice dose of Vitamin D. A Vitamin, I absolutely love.
I recall that during university terms there used to be a laminated piece of A4 paper on each of the metallic tables which stated, «It’s okay to study here, but you have to buy a coffee every two hours.» The need of such a sign signifying to me the popularity of the venue with students who found the courtyards atmosphere conducive to deep thought as I do.

Why can’t more Sydney cafés be like Sappho? It took me a while to notice this little gem, which is tucked behind a second hand bookstore (by the same name) off Glebe Point Road. When I finally discovered the amazing back patio and better, the delicious food, I became a customer for life.
This is my no-​brainer, go to spot on a rainy Sunday. Out back, the patio is covered by a plastic that creates the most magical rain-​on-​roof sound. It also makes you feel like you’re living in a snow globe. Couple that with a cappuccino and their big breakfast and you might well be in heaven. They do some different and interesting things with their breakfast. The rosemary mushrooms are a favorite, as well as the avocado salsa that accompanies. Don’t ask for scrambled eggs, though, because they only do poached… which is just fine by me.