Some restaurants are BYO booze, but this morning one Auckland cafe will be BYO chairs and tables.

Mt Albert residents are staging a coffee-sipping show of solidarity outside a popular local French cafe which has had a run in with Auckland Council over its outdoor seating area.

Local MP and cafe regular David Shearer said the Council ordered the removal of pot plants and furniture from outside the Pyrenees Cafe, even though they don't encroach on the wide footpath.

He said the Council said the cafe doesn't have a licence for the furniture and foliage, and it's now faced with intimidating fees and paperwork.

Mr Shearer has dubbed being "Auckland Counciled" and said it's heavy handed.

"I'm just tired of bureaucracy, telling people what to do and ordering us around."

A lot of other people felt the same way, so we're going to go down to the cafe and we're going to take down our own tables and chairs and have a cup of coffee, and just make the point that we want to stand up for our local enterprises and our community."

He said the Council already seems to be coming to the party thanks to locals' reaction and media interest, and is helping the cafe owners with the required paperwork for the permits they need.

"But look, it shouldn't take a whole bunch of people in the community to have to rally together and get the media involved and get some sort of bureaucratic impasse solved."

Mr Shearer said the cafe issue is just one among many bigger issues frustrating residents of the suburb.

"We've got a town centre that the Council's been promising fro a decade to help clean up. They've just welched on a deal to put a railway bridge, for the railway station, into the town centre. We've been talked and planned and consulted for years, and nothing gets done. "

He said it's "time to take to the streets."

However, Auckland Council is disputing a former Labour leader's accusations of heavy-handed tactics against a Mt Albert cafe.

The council's central resource consenting manager, Mark White, says staff have been talking with the cafe owner about issues with pedestrian access on the footpath.

But he says the cafe has been told it can continue to use outdoor seating while it applies for the appropriate consents.