Neumanns Café — Restaurant in Berlin

Horrible service experience last Sunday. After asking to buy a cake in the main cafe, I was sent to their other location, even though there was sufficient cake available. The reason was that I decided to take it with me instead of sitting down (which is actually something in their favor because they can serve more people). After I expressed doubt regarding the availability in the other location the waitress checked back with the other store and assured this wouldn’t be a problem. After arriving there after a few minutes and waiting in line, the employee there stated there was only one piece left which was not perfect. I pragmatically suggested to still buy it for a small discount explaining my previous odyssee and pointing out that I came and queued based on the information I could buy what I wanted, but the employee stubbornly insisted that she doesn’t want to give me this last piece „because they usually don’t sell that last piece at all“), which felt like pure purposeful humiliation bereft of any common sense. After discussing with her and a long line forming and people (three men) starting to attack me for holding up the service (because they „finally wanted to order their coffee“) she finally came up with the mind-blowing idea to give me this piece for free tossing the cake with a pompous gesture on a cardboard box. I was humiliated and attacked in an interaction that should have been a routine transaction, significantly messing up my day and I will never return to this...

I live in Friedrichshain for about 2 years, had dropped by this place a couple of times to drink coffee and buy bread. Which both are averagely ok. Today (a Wednesday) came in for breakfast. First of all I wasn’t allowed to use my laptop unless I went to one of the tables in the backside of the room where it’s dark, which was already annoying because 1 - the room was empty and 2 - im a paying costumer. Then I ordered some poached eggs that came on top of a slice of bread with some bacon,jam and salad. The eggs were just standard super market light yellow yolk poached eggs, there was a leave of lettuce on the bread and some jam. What they called salad was just a bunch of lettuce leaves(which definitely came directly from a bag) with some pumpkin seeds and half a cherry tomato and some thin slices of radish. So poor salad, no dressing, ingredients felt cheap and poor quality for about 17eur/pax. Bacon and bread were ok but still definitely not worth the price. In the end when I had already eaten i was asked if I still wanted to use my laptop, in the hopes that I could move to the back of the room, so they could sit someone at my table. They didn’t ask if the food was good though. In this area it’s really easy to find good breakfast/brunch : silo, aprilkind, stillbruch and so on are definitely...

When we arrived 3 tables were free outside, so with the 3 of us we took place at one of the tables. Nevertheless, the unfriendly waitress gave us a speech (only after 15 minutes of waiting for the menu) that we should have followed her "system" and waited in "line" (which was kind of delusional since there was no line at all and 3 tables were free..). She was very upset and mad about the fact that we seated ourselves at one of the free tables and told us this is not the way they operate. We felt very belittled. We are familiar with waiting to get seated, but if enough tables are free and nobody is guiding us to a table this lady should not get upset by us seating ourselves. It was an unfriendly experience and we will not come back. The lady was shocked to see we left after her unfriendly speech. Now I see the response on my review of Neumanns themselves is not that friendly either. There was no one to guide us to a table, which is why (since 3 tables were free) we sat ourselves outside. If this gives you a reason to be unfriendly to us I believe we have different opinions about hospitality. And just to be clear, it was not us being unfriendly to the waitress, we only told her we would have our coffee...