Booktalk

A gret café on Swan Street, plenty of room, cheap coffee in morning rush hour special, a great selection of books that are second hand and great ambience. Melbourne needs more booktalk cafes and keep the reading tradition up. Well worth a visit when in Richmond.

At home I’m getting rid of all my physical books in lieu of e-​books but I miss the presence of them. This combined café bookshop is my place to settle in to the comfort of being surrounded by books while enjoying a good feed and a cuppa.
The food is a good selection of health and sweet and also some nods to fun with the «Monty Python» breakfast have a health mix of spam, spam, spam and some bacon and beans.
If the rush of everyday life is getting to you and you need some way to centre yourself amongst the still written thoughts of many, this is the place for some surcease.

Booktalk was one the first cafes I regularly went to in Melbourne. Back then you could get a full breakfast and a coffee for $ 10. Plus there was an incredible chalk drawing of a (Richmond AFL) tiger on the menu/​chalk wall.
Sadly both are now gone, although Booktalk is still good value.
Booktalk is both a café and second-​hand bookshop. Not surprisingly, when you walk in you do see rows and rows of books. This is in combo with a low, fibro-​style ceiling with fluorescent lights.
Now. Admittedly, this does give the place a bit of a «primary school library» look. A bit? Ok. A lot. However, I’m not entirely sure this is a bad thing. It’s never put me off anyway.
Suffice to say, this isn’t your groovy hipster edgy café. This your café that doesn’t mind looking more-​than-​a-​little-​bit like your school library. They have a good breakfast with regular bacon. They do scones and a decent Shepard’s Pie. It’s the kind of place your aunt, or all aunties everywhere, would enjoy.
That makes it sound like a bad thing, which it most definitely is not. Sometimes you do want a straight up breakfast. Just eggs and bacon. Or some fruit toast. You get it here. All the while can browse through the admittedly-​eclectic collection of books while you down your scones.
Booktalk also has outdoor seating where you can people watch the wonderful and often weird Swan Street.
Not a destination, but definitely a safe-​haven. A really solid, dependable three stars.

Great secondhand books on Swan Street, cute café inside too.

Decent coffee most of the time, a good selection of lunch foods, and the book store provides good browsing while you wait for your coffee.

Friend of mine used to work here, a few years back. I get the feeling it had a different name then, though. It’s a combination café/​retail bookstore/​used bookstore, with the focus probably mostly on the used books. (That said, reading an old Louis Theroux book with the smell of brewing coffee in the background makes twelve-​year-​old me look at the future with hope).
Range wise, they’re pretty eclectic. Romance and science fiction shelves are a bit thin, but the crime and non-​fiction areas are more fleshed out, and the whole used things means there’ll definitey be books you don’t expect.