Self Preservation

I have been here serveral times during the last 2 years. Cannot fault the food but the service is definitely very inconsistent. Some times they are very attentive and lovely and other times you might find yourself sitting here for over 10 minutes without a menu while the wait staff completely ignores you and instead spend their time organising cutlery or talking to each other. This needs improvement!

What a great little find this place is’ How could I have missed it? Perhaps it’s the narrow frontage that leads to a space somewhat reminiscent of The European but with a modern edge. Artwork and jewelry are scattered around adding to the desire to hit the pause button and really enjoy what was one of the best coffees I’ve had in ages. Breakfast was small but plentiful and as expected beautifully presented. Nice place to escape to during a busy day.

Inconsistent is the word I would use for this café. The coffee I had the other day was superb and yet the coffee I had today was bloody awful and tasted like cardboard. The current lunch menu is underwhelming and the one thing we wanted to order was apparently not available. The breakfast menu is better but also quite limited. Level of service is so-​so.

Great place for a quick lunch– fresh salads and sandwiches. I enjoyed the pulled pork salad with beetroot and quinoa. Lovely service.

At first glance this place looks like it has so much to offer. It’s cute, has a very European style and an art gallery and as well as a café. The décor is great it fits with the Parisian end of town.
Why the 2 stars you ask? Well there wasn’t much that I can say for the service or the food. We waited 20 minutes for our coffees to arrive whilst others who arrived after us were served first. The coffee was good but not amazing at $ 4.
One of the girls I was with ordered take away coffee and she was served in a cup. When she mentioned the mistake the waitress tossed a take away cup at her to put her coffee in that. Not great service.
Food took an equally long time 40 minutes for 2 bowls of porridge and some fruit toast. The fruit toast with citrus ricotta was tasty. The porridge not bad either with rhubarb, stewed peach and chai infused yoghurt. The only problem was it was like warm and kind of gluggy but I was so hungry I ate a fair bit of it before realising.
I’m all for giving second chances so I’d probably give this a go for drinks. Not overly impressed.

Everyone needs to stop thinking of Self Preservation as a coffe/​breakfast/​lunch place and consider it a place to have amazing dinner for under $ 25 a main. Add a glass of Bannockburn Pinot Noir and it can’t be beat.
The problem is do you tell everyone or keep it as one of those Melbourne hidden secrets?

On a warm evening or even a cold night, there’s nowhere better in this part of the city to stop for a quiet glass of wine. Self Preservation is the ideal spot for a person alone, with a book in hand and a craving for a slow pinot or prosecco. If you decide not to bother meeting your friends after all, you can stick around and have another glass of wine and one of their delicious pastas of the day.

A very Melbourne café at the very Paris end of town.
SP is an affordable spot to enjoy some lunch at the pricier end of town. A tempting and always changing array of salads, sandwiches and baked goodies greet you as you walk in.
Plenty of seating inside including a large communal table where you can really stretch out with the paper while you eat.
If you get here at 12 and the sun is shining I recommend the curb side tables. A good contrast to the darker, more moody vibe inside.
I had a trout salad and really enjoyed it except it was missing something… oh that’s right, the trout! It was more a garnish of trout than the main ingredient. My partner had the lamb dish and loved it.
Happily there is table service but if you are in a hurry it’s best to pop inside and settle up as waiting for the bill can take a while.

Great service and staff. Reasonably priced brekkie. Comfortable ambience for a quick catch up with friends or a coffee chat. Omelette spinner crab was deliciousness!

A little and (almost) literal slice of Europe in a very European stretch of Bourke Street.
If you’re sitting outside, looking over a leafy outlook on Bourke, over to Madame Brussels — you can squint and almost imagine you’re in Western Europe. Which part of Western Europe I’m not sure, it’s probably a crazy mishmash of them all.
Self Preservation is a bit of a mishmash in itself. Part café, part gallery, occasional bar. A nice sort-​of-​Parisian-​maybe-​Belgian-​or-​it-​is-​Dutch interior that encourages you to relax and step out of the bustle of the city. Despite that, it still has a nice energy and buzz.
My one bugbear with Self Preservation is that I continually forget it’s there. Especially on the weekend when I’m lamenting breakfast options at that end of the CBD — I often forget it’s a totally viable option.
Great place to grab some eggs, a quick beer after work or sit for a coffee over the paper.

Big fan of this hybrid café/​gallery/​store. Great place for coffee, after work drink. Hot staff. It is also good for that.

A little while back I gave Self Preservation five stars and a great review. Things have changed. I visited today, and the service was slow and dismissive, the coffee average, and the general atmosphere unpleasant. Things change. Not always for the better.

Coffee was great breakfast was not, poached eggs over cooked and the bacon was like cardboard, the wait staff were fantastic, handled my complaint well, and took the price of my breakfast off the bill, I will be back to try breakfast again I will alway give a place a second try, fantastic coffee

Great ambience, very good coffee. A little oasis in the city.

There are just too many great eateries, cafes and bars in this neck of the woods for me to want to visit Self Preservation.
I can’t remember how we ended up here except that the place we wanted to go to probably hadn’t opened for the day, or had already closed for the day, and this was the only place left that could serve us coffee. Now that I think about it, I have a vague recollection of being shockingly hungover and needing a bit of sustenance before meeting people for a birthday lunch at some restaurant.
So ok, desperation is what drove us into Self Preservation, but it deserves better than that. I don’t think there’s anything too special about this place, but they did make us a good coffee, and it was delivered promptly into our shaky hands without much ado. We also picked up some delicious baked treats to go.
Other than that, the jewellery shop at the back of the café is a novelty. Interesting to have a look at whilst waiting for the coffee to brew.

It is with great trepidation that I tell you how wonderful this little café /​boutique is.
I quite enjoy quite mornings, after the before-​work buzz, or early on the weekend when the streets are still quiet. It’s great to grab a coffee and a bit of food, read the news, check my facebook and twitter… you know, start my day out right.
Pop in here sometime, and grab a coffee and the baked eggs. They always change the ingredients in the baked eggs, and I’ve yet to be less than pleasantly surprised. Never overcooked, and always quite quick.
Such a friendly spot, and you can wander into the back room and have a look at the wares that they have nicely displayed in curios, as if this is a museum or a boutique, that you just happen to be getting great coffee and service inside of.
Hopefully, there isn’t a line of people queued up next time I go…

Hiding among the mix of celebrated eateries on lower Bourke Street, you’ve probably walked past the café/​gallery/​restaurant/​bar many a time without even noticing. It’s not particularly noticeable save for the tidbits of food in the window that grow increasingly stale as day turns to night.
I’m not sure if the name rings true — I’ve never gone there to self-​preserve, though perhaps I’m taking things too literally. Instead I went there as a kind of accident on the way to none other than the Missey Elliot concert at the Palace Theatre. We had time to kill and I was already too drunk and disorderly to show my face at a bar. So instead we ducked into SP for a nightcap of chai lattes and coffee.
The chai, authentic tealeaves brewed in soymilk, was quite tasty and the atmosphere was comforting and quiet, a good place to collect myself before the bouncers could reject me at the door. The waitress was really laid back and kind, she even seemed interested in our plans for the night. Even though I’m sure they were closing, we didn’t feel rushed.
I haven’t gone back there to eat, mainly because the food doesn’t look appetizing. But I can safely recommend this place as the perfect spot for a drink before or after a show.

A surprising find on Bourke St but surely a sign that the home-​style café and bar trend is spreading from the north side down to the CBD. Self Preservation is about casual service and making yourself at home.
There’s a hefty and tall wooden table in the centre of the narrow front room surrounded by high bar stools, almost like a large, oval breakfast bar, and the staff don’t serve from behind a counter, instead floating around and grabbing drinks from the unhidden fridge or pouring wine from bottles on open shelves.
A friend and I shared a plate of antipasto and a couple of Cricketers Arms lagers before meeting up with a group for dinner elsewhere and it turned out to be an ideal spot for some downtime before heading out for the evening. The back half is also a jewellery store, with a range of local designers in stock as well as pieces made in their own studio above the café.