REVIEW: 6376 - Breezeway Cafe

[Lorentzen]

INDEXED

6376 - Breezeway Cafe

Year – 1990

Theme - Town

Pieces – 171

Minifigs – 5 plus 1 parrot

Price (according to peeron) $23.00

Overview:

The box:

(Picture taken from bricklink)

This set is a great addition to any Lego City out there. The large curved windows and the green front yard along with the many light bulbs and different plants creates all together a cafe that is almost timeless in appearance.

There are a few things in the design that give away the fact that this set was released way back in 1990, but nothing really stands out as being out of style in comparison to today's sleeker LEGO sets.

The manual:

You can see already on the first page, that this is should be easy as a breeze to build :) You get lots of help throughout your building process.

Random page:

Interesting pieces:

This is a long cafe, so naturally, you get a number of quite long bricks. The design is quite "open" so there are a lot of 1x1x5 bricks, and a few arches

This cafe has room for six paying customers, so you get 6 yellow chairs, some red fences that make sure no minifigs can fall from the top floor, and you also get some wineglasses

This set has numerous plants, and they all contribute to a timeless design

The reason this set wins my design award:

Curved windows with stickers - I love it.

The curved large window:

The cafe has a grill/kitchen and a bar.

Grill:

Neat simple design - My guess is that the red 1x1 tile is a steak.

Bar:

Here you can have both mustard, ketchup and... wine, altogether

The minifigs:

You get five minifigs with this set. That's actually pretty great, compared to the size of the set in itself.

The staff:

Chef: (picture taken from brickset.com)

Waiter:

The guests:

(picture taken from brickset.com)

I'll now show you the Breezeway Cafe from different angles. I love how beautiful this cafe is, I love all the lightbulbs, and the green plants that twist and twirl up against the windows, panels and walls all over. It's really beautiful if you ask me.

The entrance:

It's a really open design, so you can move around all the minifigs as you please.

Take a closer look inside:

This is probably my favourite part of the cafe: The light bulbs and the plants growing on the arch:

It must be a cosy place to sit and have a glass of wine

The verdict:

Design:

10/10 - Timeless design. Great use of plants and space.

Playability:

8/10 - There are not a lot of cool features in this set, but it is a cafe, so naturally your imagination can help you along. 5 minifigs is a definite plus too.

Build:

7/10 - It's easy and the result is stunning, but there's nothing out of the extraordinary, building wise.

Parts:

9/10 - The long bricks, the baseplate and all the windows, the plants, the chairs, fences and the many "poles" (1x1x5 bricks) are all extremely great parts in any LEGO collection

Price:

8/10 - I feel that $23.00 must have been a pretty fair price back then. A 16x32 baseplate, 5 minifigs and a great design makes this worth the money

Edited September 19, 2009 by TheBrickster

[Rick]

Thanks for the review. It's amazing that this is under 200 pieces and I still considered it a 'big' (or at least 'medium')-sized set when I was younger. This is of course largely due to the 'openness' and the use of the big curved windows. I really like the 'everyday life' feel this set has. I never noticed the 1 x 1 trans round plates being used as decoration (under the 1 x 6 arch) before.

Edited September 16, 2009 by Rick

[Lorentzen]

Yeah - I remember getting this, and thinking "wow - what a big set"

btw - I forgot to take some pictures of the cafe guests on the top floor through the windows. I guess I'll do that tomorrow

[Klaus-Dieter]

Thank you very much for this great review, Lorentzen!

I voted for

Outstanding :wub:

since this set is simply outstanding!

I luckily own this one - the S@H version but apart from different tumblers there is no difference.

It includes that many lovely and awesome stuff:

-brilliant architecture

-five awesome minifigures!!!

-even one female minifig

-a lovely garden with a loggia to sit outside

-two nice places to sit upstairs

-a great interior for the kitchen!

-a lot of plants: a big palm, yellow and red flowers in and outside

-a lot of accessory: many tumblers, a tray, a pan and a pot

What do you want more?! Perhaps only something delicious to eat?!

Klaus-Dieter

Edited September 16, 2009 by Klaus-Dieter

[prateek]

Great review. This set is amazing! I love the light bulbs too

[mikey]

Yes, a great review of a superb set. A set that I have fond memories of, I thought it was big at the time as well! I suppose when your only 10 many things seem bigger than how they appear now.

This review has brought a smile to my face it was a great set to play with and build with. It contained great pieces to MOC with. My favourate pieces were those big curved windows, I can remember the offices, swimming pools, shops etc. that I built with them. Many other usefull pieces, a palm tree, plants, the white pillars together with the great MiniFig's, including of course the Lady sitting on her own drinking wine!

You are lucky to still own such a great set, which looks in excellent condition!

[Section8]

I got this set when I was still rather young and it came as a complete surprise one Christmas morning. Here in the States I hadn't seen it in any catalogue and it wasn't available from any store. It was and still is one of my favorite sets. I even printed up custom menus for it on my parents' computer by shrinking down a greeting card to minifig size! The 1x3x5 bricks were the only ones I had for a loooooong time and I thought they were unique to this set until that magical day after my dark ages when my lego hobby met my internet hobby.

Unfortunately I was young and played with my sets rough as well as mixed them into a big tub, so the windows are pretty scratched up. I also tried gluing down the terrace pieces because they would frequently fall apart when bumped. I'll either try to find replacement windows, which could be hard with the stickers intact, or a copy of the legend version. The glue didn't hold well and didn't damage the parts too bad, so I'm less concerned.

6376 is an example of the heyday of Lego set design. The set is fairly large but it is the small things that count. The lights under the archway are a nice touch and as far as I know unreplicated in any other set. The leaves inside the upper floor, the entrance with lights, etc; all great little details I don't see too much nowadays (not to mention sets as 'boring' as a restaurant ). The five figures are great and quite a lot for the price. The only baffling thing about the set is how a palm tree grew to full size on the second story of a restaurant...

[Inconspicuous]

Excellent review, Lorentzen! I remember looking at pictures of this set in old catalogs (the Legends version, that is), and I always liked the design, despite not being an avid Town collector. I really like the open design, and the name "Breezeway" really is perfect. It's so timeless that the light/arch technique can be found in sets today like 10182 Cafe Corner (which I'm in the process of writing a review of)

Thank you for sharing this review and opening my eyes to what I missed.

[Alice]

Great review! I love this set, but don't actually own it. It's a simple little set, easy build, and everyone has a classic town smile on thier face. What's not to love! I always consider this to be one set that can blend with some paradisa sets because it is a breezy cafe that fits well with the beach sets. This stickers for the windows came in the 260 Idea Book, which we do own, and since there doesn't seem to be anything really that unique about this set, it can be easily recreated. The rarest part that I see without really looking anything up is the 6x24 white plate which goes for about 3.50 USD. I have looked at buying this set and the current going price starts at 50 USD on bricklink which is double the original price and on ebay it goes for comparable prices.

[Lorentzen]

Yeah - it really does have a Paradisa feel to it. Even though I was a boy, I often found myself checking out the LEGO catalogs for those nice Paradisa sets. The seemed so nice and sort of "90210" - I loved them. They are a great addition to a summer setting in a LEGO city.

If people want to re-build this set, I noticed that the large windows can be found on bricklink for around $2.50 a piece, in a good condition and with the stickers too. I think that's a pretty fair price.

edit: I linked to a picture of the classic box and put it in my first post of this thread

Edited September 17, 2009 by Lorentzen

[Legoist]

I think this is a very nice city set. It doesn't get 5 from me only because the build is really too simple and there are many empty spaces that could have been used better.

[Milan]

Mamma Mia's Restaurant!

What a great set. I loved this one so much. I was amazed how good it looked on Lego catalog back then. I never had a chance to get one

I really enjoyed reading this review! Thanks for bringing back old memories!

[Princess Muttonchops]

Great review Lorentzen, thank you for the flash-backs!

[missouri_bb63]

I hadn't planned on doing this GIF for a while but when I read this review yesterday I felt inspired. I never owned this set but it was on my wish list for a long time as a kid. Great review and thanks for all the pics!

GIF XML : 6376 Breezeway Cafe

The GIF and XML are for the BlueBrick layout designer. If you aren't familiar with it check out the index link below.

[Rick]

The tripping waiter nice work!

[missouri_bb63]

The tripping waiter nice work!

Thanks for noticing!

[Vestabuyer]

Greetings!

Thank you for sharing a wonderful review! This was one of the few childhood sets that survived the roughness and I am glad since it is not often that Lego comes out with any food service sets. This is a good one and is essential in the classic town setup.

[Lorentzen]

Wow - I just checked classic-town.net, and this review made the frontpage :)

thanks guys, that's pretty cool

[WhiteFang]

I am proud to own this set too! The orignal 6376, which even came out as a LEGEND set, truly make this set as one of the highly acclaimed set ever for Classic Town!

Love the assortments and the entire built of this resturant. This set is still in my display, but the white bricks are turning yellow and the stickers are starting to peel off from the window panels, but then again, I wish I had replacement for that, and some spare bricks to replace, which can be relatively easy. The two storey resturant is indeed a MUST HAVE for every Classic Town setup.

Thanks for sharing this with us! This sets get a full "5" from me.

[Widdi]

I don't have the Original 1990 version, but the Legends Re-Release. Great design and timeless, but quite a lot of big parts, even though it isn't <insert that tiresome argument>. To me a 5/5, as I've got this since 7 years, when the Legends version came out, and it's still assembled, which is only the case on 1000+ piece-sets, no matter what series. And only rarely with a medium set containing just under 200 pieces.

mFg Widdi

[lifeinplastic]

I love the way this set was brought back as a Legend, along with the Pizza set. Just goes to prove that a set doesn't need to have a lot of action, like emergency service sets, to be considered as a favourite. They would not have bought these back if they were unpopular.

[Sandy]

Sigh, why doesn't LEGO make sets like this anymore? A stylish, fully-equipped café with the appropriate minifigs wouldn't be hard to design and it would still sell quite well, I think.

I checked this set from Ebay, and there's one item with a starting bid of $180. Shows how much this set is appreciated.