About Crema & Compass

What this is

Crema & Compass is a small site about coffee shops in and around Manchester. We visit them, we sit in them, and we write about what makes each one worth your time. That's the whole of it.

What we cover

We work neighbourhood by neighbourhood, because that's how the city's coffee actually sorts itself out. Some of what you'll find here:

• The stretch from the Northern Quarter to Ancoats, where most of the roasting energy sits
• Didsbury and Chorlton, mapped cup by cup
• Altrincham, and the market-hall crowd it draws
• Stockport's independents and the Underbanks revival
• A look at the morning shift — the working rhythm of running a café here

How we write it

We go in as ordinary customers and pay for what we order. We're more interested in whether a place is good to be in than in scoring it out of ten. If a room is cramped or the coffee is thin, we'll say so, but we're not here to be cruel about people working hard.

Things change — cafés close, staff move, a roaster switches supplier. We update when we can and we'd rather leave a gap than guess.

Who runs it

About the area

Manchester, in Greater Manchester, has plenty of history of its own. For background on the town itself, its Wikipedia page is a good place to start.