The best places in Manchester for solo dining

A passion project and love letter to casual Antipodean dining, Another Heart To Feed have occupied a few desirable locations throughout Greater Manchester over the years. Now stood on the edge of Stevenson Square, the Northern Quarter’s best people-watching location, this place is the ideal blend of relaxed and cosy in which to enjoy heavily egg-based, sourdough adjacent goodness on your own. The evening offering is just as stylish, with loads of natural wines and delightful charcuterie plates, so if your coffee date transitions into a cocktail one, you’re well placed too.

Bundobust is part beer hall, part food market, serving up certifiably delicious veggie Indian food. While it is perhaps better known as a go-to for casual group dining – their street food style menu is ideal for offering lots and sharing generously – it’s also a great place to go for a solo bite, perhaps before going to a gig or seeing a film at HOME, not that we’re telling you how to live your life. Grab a beer  – they brew their own – and a bhaji butty. Excellent time guaranteed.

An icon even amongst the crowded field of Northern Quarter rice ‘n’ three cafes, Cafe Marhaba is famed for their warm hospitality and their on-site tandoor oven, baking bread and kebabs to perfection every single day. With prices that have barely gone up in the three decades it has been open (it’s about £8 for a heaped plate of rice and, yes, three different curries from a rotating selection), it’s the optimal spot for a satisfying a lunch, boasting a loyal crowd of long-time devotees who would likely keep the place to themselves if they could. If you head down to Marhaba on your own, you’re likely to be met by a huddle of welcoming, like-minded curry lovers with much the same idea as you, and feel right at home.

One of Oldham Road’s original Vietnamese joints, Ca Phe Viet part cafe part convenience store, so the vibe is incredibly low key, and there’s even a counter at the window perfectly set up for solo lunch-ers. If you fancy a bite to eat you can grab a bahn mi, the famous Vietnamese sandwich of cold cuts and crunchy salad in a warm baguette. They also do a fantastic pho, that comes in a steaming bowl the size of your head, and their iced Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk is a total game-changer, so we reckon that that’s all bases covered.

A freelancer’s favourite, Foundation Coffee have a few locations across the city centre, the mothership being on the Northern Quarter’s Lever Street. From first thing in the morning you can find people sipping on specialty coffees and loose leaf teas and tucking into breakfast sarnies. Despite the space being vast, there are loads of nooks and corners, so you can grab a booth and a brew in peace. Whether you’re working from home or watching the world go by, it’s one of the best city centre spots for a solo coffee moment. 

Manchester’s beloved independent cinema and theatre HOME is an excellent spot for a high-brow solo excursion, made better by the fact that their food and drink is significantly better than the vast majority of gallery-adjacent cafes out there. Upstairs in the more formal restaurant space there are Neapolitan pizzas and Mediterranean sharing plates, but downstairs in the more casual cafe you can enjoy pizza, poutine and bar snacks, all while soaking in HOME’s cultured ambience and passively topping up your cool points.

Idle Hands has been showing the NQ how to do trendy coffee since a lot of your other favourite cafes were in short trousers. Known for their breakfast stacks and picture-perfect sweet pies, as well as their whimsical interior space full of plants and colourful murals, it’s a perfect spot to while away a few hours with a book and a science-looking vessel of carefully brewed single origin coffee and maybe a slice of maple pecan cheesecake pie too. 

A definitive Manchester breakfast spot, Koffee Pot at the top of Oldham Street have been serving the great hungover masses of Manchester for ages now, and they’ve got it down to a fine art. They have a range of British brekkies available from the traditional Full English to a Scottish, Irish and even a Welsh breakfast to tuck into, plus bagels, burritos and the like. It’s a safe space for solo dining too, with loads of single tables. What’s better company than a delicious breakfast, a huge pot of black coffee?

The poster-cafe of Islington Marina, Pollen is about as aesthetically pleasing as cafes get. Weekends especially get very busy – expect to have to queue for your strawberry matcha cruffins and sausage and egg brioches. But if you’re on your own, you might just get lucky and bag yourself a waterfront table to sip on your flat white, look sophisticated and ponder life’s big questions, or more realistically, scroll endlessly on your phone. 

Meaning ‘drink tea’ in Cantonese (it’s also the name of the meal where you drink tea and eat dim sum), Yum Cha is a place where you can go and do just that. Located amongst the trendy independents of Kampus, the space is modern, complete with sculptural neon lighting and moody murals. Food-wise, there are mains available like katsu, massaman and roast meats, but the best thing to do is order lots of different types of dim sum, which arrive stacked high in bamboo steamers, and get stuck in, with a few steaming pots of oolong or jasmine. Sure, sharing is great but Yum Cha is just as enjoyable as a solo pursuit.