Pick-me-up joints.

Emma Sturgess rounds up the Manchester guide to coffee shops and daytime places to eat

1. Teacup on Thomas St
53 Thomas St

Once a purveyor of funky goods as well as hot drinks, this Northern Quarter favourite has refined its purpose. Now that Teacup is solely a stylish and firmly Mancunian café, it’s considerably better. Carefully-coiffed bohemian types preside over a counter stuffed with designer pies and hearty cake wedges; give them your table number and someone will amble over bearing a teapot for one, full of owner Mr Scruff’s very decent teas, or a livener from coffee company Union Hand-Roasted. Breakfast is popular, not just with hungover local residents, but a hearteningly mixed crowd of tourists, paper-reading ladies and parents with buggies.

2. Harvey Nichols Café
Exchange Square

Claim a table by the window at Harvey Nichols’ café and you’ll have something rather lovely on all four sides. Tucked into a few square feet between the wine shop, deli counter, food market and a glass wall with views of Exchange Square, the café offers consistently good coffee and posh softies alongside a taste of whatever fine foodstuffs are being promoted in store. A recent visit coincided with a push on all things Italian, so the menu of doorstep sandwiches was supplemented with appealing Italian deli boards, substantial scoff without the faff and dazzle of the next door brasserie. For afters, only a fool would overlook the florentines.

3. Café at the Rylands
The John Rylands Library, 150 Deansgate

Not many coffee bars come with an extraordinarily beautiful and ornate library attached, so thank John for Café at the Rylands. Lancashire tea and coffee that ticks all the ethical boxes is served in the modern extension next to the library’s entrance and gift shop, and sofas and newspaper racks make it a relaxed, rather than studious, experience. From potted shrimps and cheese platters to Goosnargh chicken, the menu is impeccably local, and if you miss the lunch boat (neither staff not timings are flexible, and when the kitchen is closed, it’s closed) there’s consolation in wobbly, custard-filled Manchester tarts.

4. The Social, Urbis
Cathedral Gardens

At the top of Urbis, British restaurant The Modern is doing award-winning things. Its less elevated sibling, The Social, offers cool, airy respite moments away from the city’s fraught shopping streets and malls. Well-made Fairtrade coffee, organic tea and perhaps a homemade brownie are all you need, but a fish finger sandwich is one way to gild the lunchtime lily. Occasional bursts of live music and kids’ activities add extra interest, and both hot and cold drinks are available to take out, making The Social an eminently sensible alternative to the Starbucks opposite.

5. The Sculpture Hall Café
Manchester Town Hall, Albert Square

Alfred Waterhouse’s Victorian Gothic civic hall is as imposing as it is impressive, so having a bona fide reason to climb the stairs from Albert Square is mighty useful. The Sculpture Hall Café is it. Service may be municipal, bordering on clueless, but the setting, among magnificent busts of the city’s great and good (not Bez), is bewitching in a uniquely stern sort of way. A brief and very well priced menu includes Lancashire hotpot and afternoon tea, and as befits the businesslike atmosphere (it’s only open on weekdays), frivolous things like frothy coffee are not tolerated. You’ll have a cafetiere, and you’ll like it.

** Readers’ favourite: An Outlet **
Carver’s Warehouse, Dale Street

We couldn’t leave you without adding one final coffee shop to the list – as voted by our readers on Twitter. An Outlet is relatively new (having taken over from where Love Saves the Day sadly left off) but has already etched a place for itself in the hearts, minds and bellies of the likes of Peter Saville, the entire office staff who work in Carver’s Warehouse and the Creative Tourist team (it’s where we have many of our, um, ‘meetings’). Great coffee, tasty salad bar, free papers and Wifi, chatty staff and even blankets for when it gets chilly (we’re not sure things are that grim up north but hey) – all add up to a great breakfast, coffee or lunch.

Emma Sturgess is a food writer based in Hale. Fine restaurants, industry gossip and baking are key to her delight. She is the Guild of Food Writers’ restaurant reviewer of the year, and blogs at Hale and Hearty.

Images (top to bottom): both The Social at Urbis, courtesy Urbis.

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