Appleby's Homemade Cafe - Afternoon Tea Didsbury — Restaurant in Manchester

I don't like writing bad reviews and it was a nice enough little cafe with home made cakes and tasty scones but they do not accommodate nut allergy suffers. I booked an afternoon tea and stated on the phone that I had a nut allergy and was told they don't have any cakes with nuts and when i arrived I reminded them but was presented with 2 cakes that 'have nuts in but actually might not have' they didn't seem sure if they were made with nuts or just oats. Something as minor as a nut cake touching another item of food which I may eat could be fatel. Usually when I tell people of my nut allergy they wouldn't then put a nutty cake on the plate I'm eating off and instead swap it for a nut free option however this wasn't the case there and I didn't feel 100% comfortable eating them and even had to ask them if they could give me an item of food that wasn't touching the cake that may or may not have nuts in. For people with no allergies it's fine here but for me unfortunately I wouldn't feel comfortable...

The service here was absolutely terrible, there were two members of staff on in what is quite a small cafe and no one even said hello. We were the only people in there.

Both members of staff seemed extremely inexperienced and lacked very basic customer service. Our order was taken and half of the food arrived. Another gentleman appeared to make the food and support the inexperienced staff. He then left after he thought we had been given our order.We waited a little longer and no other food arrived at our table. We asked where it was and no one seemed to know. We were informed that it wasn’t coming, at this point everyone else had finished eating so we just decided to leave.

No one working there really seemed to care or have any idea what was going on. The whole experience was pretty appalling and for what is essentially a greasy spoon that lacks in basic service standards, I would say over priced.

I would never return here and would not...

Surprised at the rather unforgiving negative reviews here as we had a great experience at this cafe. The food was high quality and fresh, the cakes were home made and very good. The loose leaf tea blend was great, which isn't always the case - I can't comment on the coffee, but nothing to worry about if you're a tea drinker.

Staff were attentive and jazzy music played in the background at a pleasant level.

We came here as the (busier) place next door seemed to have an attitude problem (staff greeted us then ignored us), place had a slightly up its own backside feel. We were glad we moved as we had a much better experience here at Appleby's and even bought some yummy fruit cake...