Hippie Gypsy

Wonderful place to get a bite to eat, relax, study,(free wifi) etc. It has a great vibe and you can tell the owner Mary loves what she does and the community that she is a part of. Will definitely return.

Went to hear a friend perform here. Cut short my rehab workout to go support a friend. The place was shut tight.
The performer confirmed the date, a buncha people came, the bassist lined up transportation, and the owner just didn’t come down to open. The owner just forgot, and when she was reached, didn’t bother to come down and open.
Venue owner: You wasted the time of the musicians, of the potential customers, and alienated a lot of potential customers. This is where bad manners and bad business intersect.

Good drinks with a great atmosphere. The owner/​operator Mary is super friendly and will make you feel right at home. There’s almost always a table open on weekend and they play good 70’s classic rock so I usually don’t even bring headphones.
A good place for laid back studying or work; try the dirty hippie (chai with espresso shot).

Bright, clean, welcoming — my personal favorite place to eat lunch and study all day. Great wi-​fi and coffee, tons of space available for studying and plentiful outlets. Countertops deep enough for a textbook + a computer.
Salads are generous and FRESH — ask for the free thinker (?) and choose unlimited toppings :) Sandwiches are low-​key and light — sliced bread /​cheese and simple dressings like chipotle and pesto. Not every day calls for pretentiously locavore, organic, whole-​grain everything or lavish imported cheeses– the food here reminds me of the lunches my mom used to make me. Also, lunch here never leaves me feeling bloated or too full to work.
I’ve never encountered anyone as patient, friendly, or hardworking as Mary, the owner. She works 12+ hours a day, hires graduates of The Bread Project (look it up) and is involved in the Berkeley community (just today, I saw her donate gift certificates for a raffle held by a local organization for homeless youth).
It’s true, the other employees can be really slow and can sometimes get orders wrong. But they are not being snarky — trust me — they are just trying to focus. Repeat what you want one more time, a little more slowly. And it’s true, the best foods at the Hippie Gypsy are the simple things– regular coffee, salad, home baked cookies. Also I wish they served croissants. BUT I have not found a better place in Berkeley to spend a productive afternoon, and I am happy to support this wonderful little café.

I heard the salads were freshly made, you pick your ingredients. Maybe I missed it because there is clearly a menu of salads, sandwiches, and there was no «picking what I wanted».
Unfortunately for me, they made my salad wrong (gave me one of the salads with meat — blech), which after 20 minutes they finally came out and apologized and told me they’d remake it. 15 minutes later came out my salad, with no dressing. The menu said the salad was tossed with ranch dressing — I had to request dressing.
Maybe this was a fluke, though it was not a particularly busy time of day. I wouldn’t call this a Café Intermezzo replacement by ANY means however — as much as I wanted it to be — it just didn’t turn out that way for me.
So overall:
Food quality = 4
Service= 2 (extremely slow for a salad, which came with no dressing)
Ambiance = 4
Overall experience = 3

Friday, 12:00PM.
Hippies rejoice! This gypsy haven is an eclectic establishment with cool quotes on the wall and interesting venue design.
Quickie:
+Good food
+Nice service
+Spacious layout
+Clean
Suggestions:
*Toppings to lettuce ratio for salads can be improved
*Expand hours
And then???
Hippie Gypsy is a hip café on the d-​l.
**********
Stuffed my face in:
1. My my hey hey (turkey sandwich)
+Baked turkey with avocado = small sammy that packs a punch
2. Lowrider
+Two different kinds of cheeses = good mix

TIP #1: This is my Café Intermezzo replacement, at least for salads. And you KNOW I’ve been looking high and low, all around the Bay, as well as overseas. come try their salads!
TIP #2: The key to open the bathroom door is hanging on the soda cooler. Don’t abuse it – the bathroom is really clean.
TIP #3: Free wifi!
As much as I miss Café Intermezzo’s out-​of-​this-​world salads, Hippie Gypsy is a decent replacement. I think that the only reason why it wasn’t packed with hungry students on a Wednesday night is its location – it’s on Northside, as opposed to Intermezzo’s former location on Southside – and the tendency for its neighborhood’s inhabitants to not be out and about on a drizzly autumn night.
So you should totally take advantage of Hippie Gypsy’s amazingly spacious café, the TV’s, the books, magazines, and wifi. There are espresso drinks, bakery items, and breakfast served all day, but what shines are their salads.
My boyfriend made our own custom salads – $ 5.89 for a small with meat or a large without meat. You get an order form and you can circle what you want on your salad (you use the same order form for sandwiches). There is so much variety to choose from! I cannot possibly remember everything from the list, or even everything that I ordered – spring mix, roasted bell peppers, guacamole, sunflower seeds, black olives, banana peppers, hard-​boiled egg, walnuts, cucumbers, tomatoes… and on and on! I chose turkey as my meat. My boyfriend even opted for bacon on his salad! It took some time for our for-​here order because every ingredient was chopped up fresh to order, and the amazing flavor was proof.
Can you tell I’m coming back for more?

So Berkeley… hippies, vegetarians, health conscious folk, you’d think it’d be easy to find the perfect salad, right?
Well, if your first stop is the Hippie Gypsy Café, then yes. In my case, I’ve had mediocre salads all over the downtown Berkeley area, and the ones here are my FAVORITE. Finally, I have found the perfect salad. The greens and veggies are always fresh and dry, and I love that you can pick as many toppings as you want, including BACON. Everything is always chopped to perfect mouth-​size pieces, with the ideal ratio so you can get a lil bit of everything in each bite.
If you’re a gluten fiend, there are sandwiches you can have custom made to your liking as well, and as with the salads, they are perfectly composed so each bite is well balanced. I really appreciate the care it takes to ensure this!
As with any coffee shop, the noise level varies with the patrons from visit to visit, but I like that it draws less of a student crowd overall. The setup is naturally accessible too, so patrons in wheelchairs can easily sit at the counter or table.
Quadruple thumbs up! (yes, I have 4 thumbs.)

I stopped by Hippie Gypsy en route to my favorite coffee shop right up the street, Philz. It wasn’t a day-​ruining catastrophe, but it was a pretty big mistake.
The Gypsy serves its drinks in styrofoam cups with plastic lids. There is no composting available in the store and no clearly-​labelled recycling. Their idea of a mocha is coffee with some chocolate chips tossed in. The chocolate chip cookie I bought was pretty good, at least.
Regardless, this place is a sad excuse for the conscious, earth-​loving, crunchy granola place it claims to be. More like the fantasty of a middle-​aged New-​Ager without half a clue as to what their customers or planet really need. I could have overlooked the cliché’d bumper stickers, «psychic readings,» and New Age/​crackpot science bookshelf, but the poor amenities only amplified the insincerity.
Next time, I’ll keep biking up the street to Philz, where they care about good coffee AND sustainability. Sorry, Hippy Gypsy.

One of my goals upon moving to Berkeley (and now Oakland) is to find the perfect café. The one where I will sit for hours upon end to write my QE papers/​dissertation. After having gone to numerous cafes, I finally found Hippie Gypsy this past summer and discovered the perfect dissertation café.
I love how this café is not very crowded and that I can stay there for hours. The wifi is super fast (and does not require a password). Outlets are abundant if you stay near the right side of the café. The owner, Mary, is super sweet and learns customers’ names very fast! By the second time I came in, she already knew me by name!
The baked goods are sooo good here… I’ve had everything: cookies, mini cinnamon rolls, muffins, and scones. All are delicious, but my favorites are the cookies. My favorite flavor is the peanut butter and as for the muffins, the banana flavor-​one tasted like banana bread! I haven’t had the sandwiches as I usually arrive pretty early, although I’ve had the bagels and the salads. I love how I can customize the salads and choose the toppings I want. While the regular food hasn’t blown me away, the baked goods are so hard to resist and always top notch!
The drinks are pretty good; I usually stuck with the soy chai latte. I’ve heard great things about the hot chocolate though, although I haven’t had it yet. I definitely come to the café for the atmosphere (even though it’s in the shade for most of the morning, it always feels warm and inviting) than for the food or drinks. The saddest thing about leaving Berkeley is how long it takes to get to Hippie Gypsy now!

Cool interior, pretty decent food, and not as busy as some of the other cafes around campus — which can be nice. But there’s a reason not so many people come here.
During my two visits the service varied from slow to nonexistent, and you can tell that the owner has never run a restaurant before. The first time I came by there wasn’t anyone working the counter, so I waited a few minutes and then walked right back out again!
The menu was impossible for me to understand without some sort of interpretive guide — when I came back a second time, and was actually able to order food, I ordered something that I thought would be a sandwich but then when it arrived it was a quesadilla! Nonetheless, the food was good enough that I’ll probably come back again later and see if things have changed at all.

What a fabulous little place! Colorful, friendly, cozy, and crazy good playlist on the jukebox. There’s not really a jukebox but the music was indeed fantastic. Think Springsteen, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, Fleetwood remix. Unfortunately no vegan sweet treats much to my dismay. But Mary, the owner, said she’s trying really hard to find a local bakery who will deliver. Otherwise, she makes much of her menu in house. Primarily salads, sandwiches, fresh fruit, and of course backed goods!
I usually get an americano or just raw black coffee but after moving and lack of sleep I tried triple shot soy latte. Tasted yummy. There is a nice little bar to sit at that looks out onto the street so excellent people watching perch. Lots of outlets.
Great little neighborhood vibe.
Just an update: came in the next day and Mary had not only remembered me but told me she had set an appointment with a vegan bakery to try to get some vegan treats! She told me to keep checking in because she would have taste testers. So, I changed my rating to 5 stars because you really just don’t find coffee shops like this anymore. Low key, friendly, and community oriented.
You’re the best Mary!

After reading these Unilocal reviews, I had a pretty good feeling about how customer service is done at the Hippie Gypsy but somehow, the magnitude of Mary’s pleasantness surpassed my highest expectations!
I followed Yoori C.‘s advice and went with the homemade peanut butter cookie to accompany my soy chai latte. Both those suckers were down in my belly in no time. The only trace I left was the oil stained (the sign of a hearty peanut butter cookie) napkin atop a cute, whimsical plate that the cookie was served on.
I got so comfortable, all nestled in the plethora of pillows lining the window, that I found myself not doing any work but rather, simply enjoying the classic rock playing and the ambiance of being among a fortune teller booth and a retro coca cola machine.
Oh, and the restroom is Alice in Wonderland themed.
At last, I had to leave… but not before Mary offered to fill up my klean kanteen.

So we planned a trip to Berkeley because of Cheeseboard. On our way there, we made a pit stop at the Hippie Gypsy.
Mary, the owner, is one of the sweetest ladies I have ever met. She welcomed us and made us felt like regulars, offering us free brownies and cupcakes. It was just us 4 guys, drinking delicious Italian soda, just relaxing and enjoying our time. For us, coming here was just a pit stop but we actually stayed at the Hippie Gypsy for a good hour or so. Definitely made a very food first impression. I promised Mary I would write an 5 star review for her!
To Mary,
Thanks for the awesome customer service, the delicious brownies and cupcakes, and all the tips and advice you gave us about all the good eats in Berkeley because of Cheeseboard was closed on Sundays. Bummer! Take care Mary, and wish you all the best!
From myself (clark) and the rest of the boys!

I couldn’t have asked for a better café experience. I ordered a chai latte with an espresso shot, also known as a «dirty hippie» — so good and perfectly balanced. They also didn’t charge extra for soy milk or any of the other milk options. The owner behind the counter was friendly and a cheerful woman who offered free house coffee towards the end of the night as well. The seats are comfy with cushions and the large windows keep the inside nice with natural light and there are tables and chairs outside as well. I am definitely coming back here.
Don’t forget that if you check in on Unilocal,you get a free delicious cookie. Get peanut butter.

Hippie Gypsy is one of my favorite cafes to power study on the weekends.
There you will find salads, paninis/​sandwiches, great house (italian roast) coffee, Fizzy drinks, and some good cookies. Mary (the owner) has some sweet deals: 5.95 $ or 7.95 $ for a small or large sandwich or salad with a cookie and a drink! Talk about a steal!!! On weekend evenings there are bands and open mics, which adds a nice vibe to the place if you’ve been studying for hours on end. Usually there are tables open but on weekend evenings, the place gets packed. Week days are wide open.
Even though H.G. doesn’t have as many food items, I keep coming back because of Mary. She is one of the few owners I have come across that is open, caring, and damn coooool! We need more people like her. Give it a shot! The worst that can happen is you’ll leave with a smile.

The first thing I saw when I got near this café was mini dancing sunflowers– how can I not like this café after that?
I admit it isn’t a super streamline service with many workers (there was only 1 person working the cashier and the kitchen), so it takes a little longer than usual, but the service they provide is personalized and friendly! The woman at the counter (I’m going to assume it was Mary) made friendly small talk and was super friendly and happy!
Atmosphere was really chill. I thought their décor to fit the hippie/​gypsy theme was really awesome. The small details like an old school refrigerator for sodas, glitter lava lamps, colorful table clothes, and even the wall decals of a groovy van was a great touch to a unique café theme.
Came here to talk with a friend and it was a nice atmosphere for that and studying. The music was not the usual top 20’s but was just old goodies with the title/​song/​artist/​picture displayed on a large screen in the front, tying the theme together very well. I think they played with these themes really thoughtfully because it could have been easily pretty tacky, but it was just a good combo of modernity and old school-​ness. They have a Ipad in the front where you can sign in your address to get points for free food/​drink incentives, which I’m a big fan of.
I try not to judge café’s by their food because normally I come for the caffeine, good wifi, and the atmosphere. I liked that they serve breakfast all day, and got the egg sandwich with sausage, provolone, and a spicy sauce. One complaint I have was that in my egg there was a bite where there was a bit of an egg shell, which is too bad. Minus one point for that. I didn’t hate the sandwich but I didn’t love it. I thought it needed a bit more flavor or seasoning. But the white chocolate raspberry mocha was AWESOME. YUM. I love my sweet coffees. Even their styrofoamto cups were pretty groovy.
I’ll definitely be back because I think it’s a nice café to catch up with friends and study. Caffeine to the people!

I was meeting up with a friend in Berkeley but decided to arrive early so I could study and get a little work done beforehand. I did a quick Unilocal search and Hippie Gypsy caught my eye first so I decided to go there.
It’s a few blocks away from the downtown bart station but it’s not unbearable. Pretty easy to find.
I was greeted right away when I walked in. I assume this is the owner based on other reviews. She was talking to another person about their order so I took the time to look around. The café itself has as much character as the owner does. I love the playlist they have for the place too. Lots of old favorites.
Anyway, I decided to order a large mocha with an extra shot of espresso. She explained that her mochas had shots in it already and asked if it was still okay but I went for it because I was so tired. There’s a check in deal for a free housemade cookie if you get an espresso drink so I got her housemade peanut butter cookie. I saw a cute little German chocolate cake in the case so I asked for that too.
I sat by the window which and worked on some readings while I ate my food. I liked the cookie for the homey taste it had. I liked the German chocolate cake because it tasted good although I had to take off a chunk of the frosting because it was really sweet. The mocha was good too. If you’re a big coffee snob, you might not like it here but I just wanted something to wake me up.
Work wise, the café itself provides a pretty good work environment. Free wi-​fi, a lot of seating, a decent food/​pastry/​coffee menu, good ambiance. It took a little while for me to find an outlet, but they’re there.
Charming little place. And really friendly service!

I had to update my review and downgrade Hippie Gypsy from 3 to 2 stars — I could not in good conscience tarnish my Unilocal reputation and be known for giving that place a 3-​star review. As my first review states, I like their lunch deli sandwiches, and their meal deal. But that alone does not warrant 3 stars, and, let’s face it, I was probably overly generous with my first review — anyone can buy cold cuts, put them on wheat bread with cheese, and grill them on a panini press. Actually, I can do that, at home.
The last time i was there I saw that they offer breakfast sandwiches. I woke up one morning, hungry, only to realize I had no breakfast food in my apartment. I remembered that HG served breakfast, and optimistically walked over to order a ham egg and cheese sandwich. MISTAKE. It was not Mary, the owner (middle aged woman with brown hair who is very friendly), it was another woman who I’ve never seen before, who was equally as friendly, but, incredibly poorly trained at her job (more on that below). I had to repeat my order several times. NOTE: SEE THE OWNER’S COMMENT BELOW –they do not use «fake» eggs as I had previously thought, apparently they are eggs that they bake into a patty, so that’s good to know
I ordered a non-​fat café au lait — this is a common item on all café menus, as common as a latte or cappuccino. The response «au WHAT?» the woman had NO IDEA what a café au lait was. I politely explained that it’s steamed milk and coffee. She again asked me to repeat what kind of milk I wanted — as she, admittedly, was so thrown off by me asking for an «au lait.» I think she made it like you make lattes (assuming she knows how to make those), and used very little coffee and a ton of milk, because it tasted like 90% milk and maybe 10% coffee. It was so bad I couldn’t finish it.
Maybe it was because I was in a rush that morning, maybe it was because i was in a bad mood, but that visit to HG just totally changed my opinion of the place. I don’t mean to be a snob, and I feel bad, because everyone who works there is really NICE, but I’m sorry, being nice does not make your food or beverages any better. I paid over $ 7 for a fake «egg» sandwich and hot milk with a splash of coffee. Waste of money and time. I won’t be back for breakfast or coffee, ever. Hippe Gypsy, I wanted so bad to have another reason to like you, but instead, you gave me multiple reasons not to.
UPDATE: I am impressed with Mary, the owner’s, comment (see below), I’m still not sure whether I’ll return, but it is good to know 1) that they are using real eggs, and 2) that Mary cares enough as an owner to respond to negative Unilocal reviews and try to rectify the situation.

I am very impressed by this place! A fun space with the friendly staff and literary décor, ahah. free wifi is a perk, too. Mary makes such an effort to get to know her patrons, it’s really heartwarming when she remembers you.
The food isn’t the most impressive, but I love how you can feel at home when you walk in here.