The Art of Tea

Everything delicious. Hummus comes with a basics greens salad and some gorgeous oily/​herby bread (I don’t know the name…)
Free WiFi that works well and good drinks. Top notch book shop as well if you’re looking for an older read.

I had the worst experience of my life in this place!
I went there with my husband and a group of friends and asked for some gluten free food (I am coeliac!). After ordering they let us wait for at least one hour before serving us. They forgot what my friends ordered (so they had decided to cancel their order). When my turn came they brought me my salad with croutons on top (which contain gluten!). I complained and the waitress told me «just to remove them», when I let her notice that the my food could be contaminated she then took my plate back and brought another one after a while. When my salad arrived it was so salty I couldn’t eat it and I had to leave it! When my husband went to pay the bill and complained about the food and for the way we were treated they offered to only remove a tea from our bill (which at this point felt ridiculous to me really!). I waked out that place angry and hungry, I will never go back there for sure!

So so lovely in here. Took my friend who doesn’t come to Didsbury very often because it’s so cosy and relaxing. A great place to pass the time and catch up with friends. We were lucky enough to grab the comfy sofas too, which also adds to how you feel.
The staff here are all hipsters, but not in the «I’m far too cool to talk to you» way which can sometimes happen. A lovely girl cleared our table, made conversation but seemed genuinely interested I’m what we had to say which was sweet, and definitely made us immediately feel at home.
I opted for a latte which was really nice. Great milk which was just like melted ice cream sitting on top of a great has bean coffee (which you can also buy at a reasonable £6 a bag). My friend doesn’t drink coffee so had a hot chocolate and it arrived with all the works. Cream. Marshmallows. And a smile. She mmmmmed and oooooooed over it, so I guess she liked it… Alot actually.
Overall a cutesy place with super sweet staff advanced bookshop in the back. Perfect way to spend a Sunday if you ask me!

Tea + books = heaven
I could almost stop this review here but there was even more to The Art of Tea. The place itself is really nice, cosy with a warm atmosphere. I loved spending a couple of hours there on a Saturday afternoon drinking an amazing hot chocolate with marshmallows and tasting different cakes. While waiting for a table, we were encouraged to have a look at the back of the tea place. And there, was a second-​hand bookshop with so many Penguin books that I was seeing life in orange by the time I made my order. I love the concept of having tea and books in the same place. I wish I was doing that everyday!

Great value and atmosphere. Nice on your own with a book or laptop, or with friends on the comfy sofas. They are always happy to make the drinks slightly differently for me, and they always let me order off the breakfast menu after it’s finished!
My only issue is not enough chairs. I’ve sometimes had to wait or just leave when all the tables are full!

My first time visit and I was super impressed by the ambiance in and even outside the venue.
I sat outside on a small but cute woody chair with my Iced Lemon Matcha Tea (£2.70) and enjoyed it! It was lemony, not too sweet and quite light… better than green tea.
Lovely staff and I would definitely come back.
Great for artists/​designers and even hipster ;)

The Art of Tea is another of my regular haunts in Didsbury. I am partial to quality loose leaf tea and speciality coffee and I usually visit this place a couple of times a month. However it’s always to drink beer and not tea!
I love this little venue, it’s small, intimate and the staff and owners are a really nice bunch of people and always attentive.
The beer selection could be better. They only have one draft line and that is for Vedett lager. The bottle selection have a few beers that seem to change to keep things fresh but over the past few months the variety of the bottle selection seems to have gone down. They used to have a great selection of craft beers from BrewDog, Thornbridge and some other smaller breweries. Now it seems to be a collection of mainly lagers and the odd wheat beer from larger companies.
I really feel this place could really stand out from the other bars in Didsbury by offering a wider choice of exciting bottled craft beers and put in an extra beer line as a guest keg that changes to a different beer every time. Keep the Vedett as it’s a decent lager but change things up with a guest keg line with craft beer on keg.
I also hired this place for my 30^th birthday party last year and it was an excellent choice. We had the whole bar to ourselves and the staff were brilliant. Helping us get set up, moved around the interior layout a little, we had full control over the jukebox. We pretty much drunk them out of beer that night as the kegs of Vedett quickly dried up and the bottles were being sunk fast. I would highly recommend this place if you want a quirky, intimate venue with good beers and food for a special occasion.
Overall I really love this place and you should definitely check it out if you’re in Didsbury.

Loved my pot of mint tea for a meeting. Chilled music & free wifi also. Lovely spot.

My favourite drinking haunt in Didsbury!
The Art of Tea is a quirky little café bar in Didsbury Village. I tend to stay clear of Didsbury village as it has far too many chain pubs and bars for my liking, but the Art of Tea is a little gem. Set back just off the main strip of the village on Barlow Moore Road.
I tend to go for a few casual glasses of wine during the week. The house white wine is very nice and they have a very good selection of beer. I have not eaten here yet, however, the food does look very scrummy. What makes this place slightly different is that you go to the bar, order your drinks then they bring the drinks to you. Once you have finished and ready to move on, this is when you pay for the bill. I quiet like this concept and you are not constantly paying for rounds all night. The staff are great, helpful and friendly.
My partner held his 30^th birthday party here and we booked the whole venue out on a Saturday night. The staff were very accommodating and let us pretty much do what we liked. Due to noise restrictions we did have to come in from outside at 11pm but we kept the music going till late. If you would like to hold a party in a quirky little venue then this is your place!

Not really my place, though the tea is nice.

A humble little hotspot! By recommendation, I met up with my housemate here to sample the freshly brewed tea served in a pot and was by no means disappointed. Ordered myself a lovely pot of breakfast tea and got comfortable amongst the quaint atmosphere for a good old chin wag. I will definitely be returning, medical textbooks and notes in hand, with the thoughts of tea and cake a saving grace when exams are looming. Next time, I also intend to visit peckish, in order to sample the delightful looking cakes displayed. Watch this space.

The Art of Tea is a delightful place to while away a lazy afternoon — subdued and calming ambience; perfect for chilling out and chatting with friends or relaxng with a book.
Array of art work to gaze at (and buy if desired) and quaint little book shop where many a hidden treasure can be unearthed.
Good selection of teas available to suit all palates and a tasty selection of food.
Highly recommended if you’re ever in Didsbury village

A Didsbury resident and enthusiast I felt compelled to visit The Art of Tea’ following the positive reviews here. However, i was left disappointed and actually rather annoyed that a place which probably could be better was barely passable.
My Dad and I stopped in for a pot of tea. There were 4 other customers sat in two’s on two separate tables so it wasn’t busy by any stretch of the imagination.
There was a young lady behind the bar who completely ignored our existence whilst we continued to perch awkwardly in front of the bar.
We made a point of reading & then discussing the menu between us to pass the time and in the hope of hinting that yes, we were serious customers and at some point wished to be served!
…But alas, we were still ignored!
We decided to be a bit more direct so moved around to the other side of the bar, hinting rather firmly that yes, we have studied the menu and now, have made our choices and want serving dammit!
The lady behind the bar without a smile or ‘hello’ coldly murmured ‘go and sit down and i’ll come and take your order.’ By this point she had yet to glance over at us, needless to say we felt a bit invisible.
Feeling invisible & rather annoyed by this point my Dad and i proceeded to a little quirky wood table down by the window and took the time to take in the place and double check our existence, had we somehow become invisible?
5 minutes passed us by, we looked over to the bar area to try to see what was captivating the lady enough to completely ignore us and from what we could see, she was just fiddling about rearranging things. Nothing too pressing.
At this point we gave up and decided to go elsewhere, i feel sorry for the owners of this establishment because I am sure that they would be horrified to read this review.
Horrendous service, firstly, we were not acknowledged and when we finally were it was rude, cold and frankly unpleasant.
Maybe i caught the café on a bad day but unfortunately impressions last and i doubt the bad taste in my mouth about this place will remain as i have absolutely no plans to go back.
Its a shame because the décor was charmingly quirky and had so much character. It is obvious that someone has put a lot of love into this place but sadly the young lady behind the bar let that down with her terrible customer service. I hope the owners read this review and re-​educate their staff because they were let down by her on this occasion and its not good enough. A shame.

I live about a 10 minute stroll from here, so after popping in fo breakfast at the nearby Wetherspoons to watch England lose in the first one day match, I thought Id walk on an extra 2 minutes and see what the fuss was about.
First thing was confusion — do I sit down and wait to have my order taken, go to the incongruous looking bar? Having sat in a chair hat would take me anout 10 minutes to get back out of, my dcision was taken for me, although the guy at the bar did come to take my order. Then came the thing that led to the 3 stars — surprisingly poor chice of tea — not even a lapsong souchong. GRRR. Art of tea?
As I had already had the 1500 calorie breakfast at Wetherspoons I did not eat and settled for the pot of tea (boring earl grey) in mismatched china and place onto the wobbly table — quirky or just poor — i guess thats for the individual to decide. Having been greatly peeved by the lack of tea choice I orderd a large bombay sapphire and tonic to get over my dissapointment.
The saving grace was my wandering arounf the book shop at the back — as reviewers have said a tad on the expensive side — but I did weed out first editions of East of Eden and Fifth Column for under £20 which was a bargain, and I found the foreign owner to be a delight to talk to.
So — for me — I think the tea shop part has been blown out of proportion and was seriously dissapointed. It was like going to the Louvre and finding a half finished «dot-​to-​dot» Mona Lisa hanging up.
The saving grace was the bookshop, and the friendly nature of the tea shop staff (note not tea-​room, which is what Didsbury deserves).
Really disapointed.

I love tea. Green tea, jasmine tea, black tea, darjeeling tea, chrystantheum tea, name it I’d probably have tried it. Yet how come it’s taken me this long to find this place.
The Art of Tea is suitably located in Didsbury. It’s got cute décor, with a display of local artworks, antique mirrors and a mish mash of tables and chairs. My kind of place this mish mash.
I’m going to on about the breakfast selection, pancakes and bacon and syrup! Lots of nice sandwiches and bagels, bacon brie and cranberry absolutely top notch. So actually, it really wasn’t about the tea. Strange that is. The other downfall is that the staff didn’t seem very friendly, I don’t really appreciate the slamming of my food on the table. You might be popular and busy, but sorry deal with it if you want to keep it that way.
Overall I may still come back here when I’m about the Didsbury area. I expect no extensive list of teas but a nice little café nonetheless.

I spent an enjoyable hour at The Art of Tea on Saturday afternoon. Someone had already snagged the comfy sofa but we managed to grab a table by the window.
The first thing you notice about this place is that everything is mismatched, from the furniture, to the vases on the tables, to the teacups and saucers. But it all seems to hang together and adds a sense of informality and cosiness. The walls are adorned with assorted original artwork, all of which is available to buy.
The second thing you notice is that it’s not all about the tea. In fact the menu includes quite a modest range, given the café’s name. My husband ordered red bush tea and lemon drizzle cake and I went with English breakfast tea and chocolate crunch. Both were delicious.
The Art of Tea is a great place to come to relax, meet friends or work. Wifi is free. As well as tea the menu includes a selection of coffees, specialist beers, wines and cocktails. Food is served throughout the day from wholesome breakfasts to snacks and pizzas.
Before you leave check out the second hand book shop which is tucked away at the back of the café.

This shop is set at the top of Barlow Moor Road, a couple of minute’s walk from the main East Didsbury drag on the Wilmslow Road. However, the popularity of this place alongside the protests and grafitti drawn on the new Costa in Didsbury Village do seem to illustrate the point that the residents of Didsbury would prefer to sup tea and coffee somewhere with character than another carbon copy Costa.
I recently went to China, where I was disappointed at the range of teas available in tea shops. It was good tea, but there was something about the reputation of China that made me expect more. Maybe I’m just hard to please, but I would agree with Rebecca’s friend about the variety here. I mean, you can get your normal range of breakfast teas and herbal teas, but for somewhere that calls itself ‘the Art of Tea’ the selection is surprisingly limited, just like in China.
Anyway, if you prefer the quirks described by the other reviewers to the sterile environment of the big chains then the Art of Tea is a brilliant place to put your feet up, read the paper and slurp on a hot drink, especially on a cold winter’s afternoon.

For a while after graduation, jobless and pretty much homeless, I found myself sort-​of squatting at a friend’s house in Didsbury. Well, I was a welcome guest, but it sounds kind of romantic in a hard-​knock-​life kinda way if I say I was squatting. During my short residence in Didsbury, I spent approximately 65% of my waking hours in the Art of Tea, an adorable little teashop on Barlow Moor Road. Why did I spend so much time there? Well, my friend’s house was cold and usually empty, and the internet was on the blink. So hie’d I hence to the Art of Tea, to use their warmth and internet and more importantly, to spend my hard earned pennies on tea and cake.
Let’s talk, then, about the cake. The cake, my friends, is good. Really good. When last I went, there was a delicious banana bread and some cutesy little fairy cakes, but the selection changes from day to day. They also offer a range of breakfasty stuff (bagels etc) and sandwiches, as well as hot mains. All good to eat and fairly well priced. I’ve always been of the school of thought that herbal tea is an expensive and unnecessary method of colouring hot water, but a friend of mine, who is a connoisseur of tea, gives the tea selection at Art of Tea a score of ⁶⁄₁₀. According to her, there isn’t a wide enough range for a place that calls itself the Art of Tea, but I think she’s just being fussy. Their coffee is fabulous and their English Breakfast and Earl Grey teas are lush and are served in generous proportions in pretty mismatched china.
It’s not just the china that’s mismatched; the furniture is all higgledy piggeldy and obviously upcycled. Along with the cool music (expect to hear Belle and Sebastian, Joanna Newsom and PJ Harvey) and hangover-​friendly lighting, the Art of Tea is like a very nice living room. The décor is cute, vintage pictures and pretty stuff, and my favourite, their top 10 lists. I can only recall one such ‘list’ right now, because it was fantastic. It was a list of their favourite lists. Shopping list, Schindler’s list… etc. It’s just another kooky quirk that makes Art of Tea a nice place to hang out.
Also fabulous is the bookshop out back. Whether you fancy an old dusty art book or a hardly-​thumbed new paperback, you’ll probably find it here. It’s great for books as presents, as there’s a good range of older collectibles and the owner (if you catch him in a good mood) is very helpful. The prices are pretty steep for second hand books, about £5 for a paperback seems to be the norm. It’s a shame, but I suppose they’ve got to hike their prices up a bit, with everyone buying for 1p on Amazon nowadays. Sigh, the state of the world, eh? There’s also a picture framers out back, whose services I never had occasion to use, but has a good reputation locally.
In a sea of Caffe Neros and Costa Coffees and bloody Starbucks, it’s always great to see a place rising above mediocrity to offer something a bit different. This is a comfortable place where you can catch a quick cuppa, or sit for hours, ordering endless pots of Earl Grey and applying for jobs. I still credit the lovely atmosphere and dynamite cakes with landing me my first post-​graduation job, and thank the Artists of Tea for allowing me to abuse their wi-​fi connection so shamelessly.

I quite like The Art of Tea, I like to take my copy of the Guardian in there on a Saturday and sometimes mince around looking at the books for sale, after having tea and home-​made cake of course! You will also like this place if you are adverse to the coffee chains — Angela is right, the coffee is none too shabby either, but the décor is shabby chic/​oldy worldy, and the crockery you get your cakes (yes, plural) placed on is seriously cute.
There is also a picture framers in the back and he does not charge the earth to get your classic film posters framed!

This place is a little further out of the centre, in Didsbury, but is well worth a mention. Designed much like a cosy cottage, it’s a real home from home where you’ll feel welcome to spend hours and hours.
During the day you can lounge around here, work on your computer (as there’s free internet access) or just sit back and read the paper or browse the bookshop. They offer a full range of teas and cakes as well as a homely food menu and in the evening there’s wonderful music, world beers served and special events including art exhibitions.
One thing I would say is the choice of teas are quite limiting. In fact i find their coffee much better. I’d still be in here every day though if I lived locally.