Eat is the post-modern cafe on St. Ann's Square, where the last Coffee Republic surrendered to corporate coffee powerhouses, though after one meal at Eat, you'll wish this location had become yet another ubiquitous Starbucks. Part of a chain of cafes from the southern part of the country, Eat has taken everything you loved about Coffee Republic and chucked it out the window. The coffee is bitter and flat, the 'fresh' sandwiches taste like eating raw oats, and the downstairs seating has mysteriously disappeared off the face of the earth, so that Eat is mostly take-away, though it boasts a dining area of about fifteen chairs at four tables and a window ledge.

What Eat is, to be exact, is a trendy southern place with trendy ingredients and even trendier minimalist names like Soup. and Drink. (each with an annoying period at the end, so that typing a review of the food makes it appear that one doesn't have a proper grasp of punctuation.) Old cafe standards like tomato and cheese sandwiches and tuna baguettes have been spiced up with cucumbers, pesto, and Eat's favorite garnish, rocket, a tough and chewy weed very similar in taste and texture to dandelion leaves, which were as trendy in the 1980s. For side dishes, you can have pumpkin and butternut squash soup (with rocket) or prawn salad (with rocket), and for afters, there's espresso fudge chocolate cake (rocket sold separately). The coffee is gritty, the soda is warm, and the hot pies and pasties leave a lot to be desired.

Luckily, for the cafe addicts in Manchester, there's a Starbucks in one direction and a Caffe Nero in the other. I strongly advise eating at either establishment over Eat, and considering I'm a girl who got addicted to good espresso while living in Washington state and thinks Starbucks cafe mocha tastes like hot chocolate, that's saying something.