Earth Cafe

The Earth café is one of favourite places to go for lunch it’s quirky and like nowhere else.

As a recently converted vegetarian , also with coeliac disease it is hard to find places like this! My boyfriend (also vege) visited last week and I was not disappointed. The lovely young lady working asked if I was ok and I asked if there were any gluten free options- and with confidence she answered and told me everything that was available (there was ALOT!)

Another lady even shouted from the kitchen to say the strawberry cake that day was gluten free! The food was amazing and every one was so friendly. Will become a regular no doubt! 

Great service, always the best, always nice !

A lovely little place where you can enjoy your favourite juce.

Whether it's peace and quiet as I sip my energising carrot, apple and ginger smoothie or just a tasty, wholesome, vegetarian gluten free meal from the amazing specials on offer, Earth Cafe always delivers.  I have been many times over the years and the food and service has always been fantastic.  It offers great value for money and excellent choices for individuals with special dietary requirements.  For someone like myself who follows a vegetarian, gluten free diet, it feels wonderful to be so spoiled for choice.  Hidden away in a basement in Manchester's Northern Quarter, this little gem has to be one of Manchester's best kept secrets and offers something for everyone.

Lovely little laid-back cafe hidden away in the Northern quarter – a short walk from the Arndale centre.
Nice variety of vegetarian food on offer in a canteen-style setting and fresh smoothies and juices to wash it down with.
Staff are friendly and helpful and will cater for those with dietary requirements or intolerances/allergies.
Well worth paying a visit to

cool and hippy :)

Great wonderful spot in a quiet place of the Northern Quarter, Manchester. fresh healthy food and drinks. veggie heaven.

Excellent, so good this place has stayed open through the recession. Its now under different management from the buddhist centre but continues to serve excellent, vegan and vegetarian food, juices, coffee and smoothies. Great place to chill out, with wonderful service. Good photography and art exhibitions and events, such as poetry and photography tuition one to ones and workshops. Check it out !

When I visited Manchester for the first time (August 2010), this was the nearest vegetarian restaurant from my hotel, and I am grateful that it was! The service was stupendous! Great for vegans, as they ask you to choose from cow's or milk every time you order for tea(or coffee, etc.). The staff are very friendly. Unexpectedly, the menu was not very expensive and was utterly delightful! I enjoyed every moment in this restaurant and will certainly visit again. I recommend this to every vegetarians and vegans!

We visited Earth Cafe last Saturday, we were directed by a taxi driver and it was only a short walk from the Arndale Centre. The staff are very friendly and helpful, the chef was also accomodating. There is a good selection of appetising food which is delicious, the cakes are scrummy! The atmosphere is relaxed and friendly. A wonderful place to visit for a healthy meal especially if you are vegan/vegetarian. There are not many places for vegans/vegetarians to eat in Manchester so this is a real gem! We will be going again for sure.

Hidden away down one of the Northern Quarter's numerous side streets, the Earth Café is the kind of place that doesn't immediately jump out at you. Indeed, I must have passed it a million times before I finally decided to try it out for myself. But I'm very glad I did. This is a gloriously laid back little eatery which specialises in vegetarian and vegan cuisine. They also cater for specialist diets too, so it's a great place to take someone who may be lactose intolerant or coeliac.

As one of the above commenter's has noted, it is a 'canteen style' cafe, which means you have to choose from a wide range of delicious looking dishes from behind a hot plate. However, whenever I've been here, these have been a far cry from the sticky, dried-up concoctions I've been served up at other places. They do some great curries here, and I'd even go so far as to say that their vegetarian lasagne is the best in Manchester City Centre.

The Earth Cafe also serves an excellent range of home made cakes, and some truly stonking smoothies. And they have free wi-fi too, making it a great place to set up shop if you're looking for a chilled out place to work for a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon.

OK, so it may be a bit hippy-ish, but The Earth Cafe is great for both meat eaters and non meat eaters alike. Why not try it the next time you're in the area?

Situated under the Buddhist centre, the Earth Cafe is, as you'd expect, a bit hippie dippie. If that sort of thing puts you off, go to a Weatherspoons.

For those who don't mind it, or indeed, lap it up, then there's a decent little cafe to be had.

The food is vegetarian/vegan and they make some cracking curries and the like. It's all very good for you, so perhaps not the place to indulge yourself. That said, the smoothies they make are preposterously good.

It can get busy (thanks to vegetarians not being very well catered for in Manchester) but it's worth popping in for some wholesome grub.

Of course, the wishy washy mood music can get on your nerves and the water feature Buddha can make you need to visit the toilet every 2 seconds, but really, that's small fry.

It's a mellow little place in the Northern Quarter and worth a visit at least once. If you have a veggie pal, it's a must.

The staff are painfully sweet too.

I’d heard wonderful things about this vegan café, so I was really excited when we finally went for a meal there. However, I left feeling a little disappointed.

First impressions are good. It’s a great space in a Northern Quarter basement, with warm red walls, reclaimed wood features and a calm atmosphere. There’s a huge menu, ranging from breakfast stuff and tasty cakes to light lunches and full meals. Like many vegan restaurants, the food is served canteen style – great if you’re in a rush! However, it’s kept warm on hot plates and our meals were lukewarm by the time we got them! Maybe you have to get there closer to 12pm (We arrived at 1.30pm) if you like your food piping hot.

Finally, I think the prices could have been a little friendlier. I know all profits probably go to a good cause, but our meals weren’t great value and I felt we could have got something cheaper and tastier from elsewhere. Still, it’s a nice place to spend a Saturday afternoon and it’s great to have a vegan place so close to the city centre.

This place is great! Eating the food & drinking the drinks make you feel really healthy, but they’re also really really tasty!

When we went it was impossible to choose which cakes to eat as they were all so tempting! They also do a great chai tea which is lovely on a cold day, aswell as freshly squeezed smoothies for a cooler day.

The whole place is nice & chilled, with really friendly staff. Apparently it nearly closed a while back, but some of the staff bought it & I’m glad they did!

Superb healthy food, I cannot praise this place enough, great staff, great vibe and veg/vegetarian food, now open from 9am for healthy breakfasts. Don’t ever change! Wonderful juices too, this is a hidden gem in Manchester run by the buddhists upstairs.

Footnote 6/3/2009 Went yesterday and it looks like they are in a handover period/sold - new faces been shown how to mop up. Watch this space - I really hope standards don’t go down as this place is a gem.

Lovely little place, accessed by some stairs into the basement under the Buddist Centre. Great, wholesome food, tasty and good for you!. Love things like the veggie bakes and goolash. while it is lovely, I found the salad portions to be on the small side but you get a heap of cooked veg if you opt for them. Th tempting selection of cakes on offer too and a good raange of drinks and feshly squeezed juices from their very noisy blender. Gets busy quickly and it is the sort of place people tend to linger. Tinkling chime music and soothing wafts of cooking smells from the kitchen make it a very relaxing place to eat. Popular with familys/groups, there’s a couple of larger setting tables at one side. Help yourself to water from the jugs on the table.

I couldn't believe Earth Cafe when I stumbled upon it, and I've come to love it ever since. Where else can you choose between soya and cow's milk in your coffee, get freshly squeezed juices and smoothies or choose between the tempting wholesome deserts, cakes and main meals on offer?
The staff are always willing to have a joke and recommend the best stuff for the day, and even if you're REALLY awkward with your diet, they'll do the best to help. This is not a boho-hippy cafe (unless you want it to be!) but offers the best in good food.