Gemini Café

Some reviews I read are unbelievable. This place was horrible. My partner and I ordered a breakfast and everything was deep fried. Disgusting. We couldn’t eat it and left. Go there at your peril. Should be no stars. No frills yeah deffo no frills

The Gemini café is a veteran of the Oxford road food offer. It’s been here years and it’s plus and for some it’s minus is it’s never changed. It is what it is. Its a diner. Pleather booths, full breakfast fry ups, burgers, chips etc. prices are low and you order at the counter and listen for your number. The food is basic but tasty and well prepared and presented and the service is good. The hot beverage options are better than the diner average and there is free wifi. It’s handy for hospital visitors and there is closeby free 1 hour parking and it’s close to the cycle path and bus stop. There’s an ATM right next door. It’s clientele is a broad mix — students, locals, hospital visitors and staff, tourists. You’ll leave fuller than a sandwich shop at a similar outlay. I hope places like this survive the blitzkrieg of opening chains, gentrification and blander bespokes and artisan start ups. There should be a place for the Gemini café and it’s simple unassuming comforts for the weary mancunian traveler.

went to have lunch here on friday
just got to the door and seen very dirty windows
looks like they have never been cleaned!
to me thats a no no as if your windows are dirty then i
hate to see what else is dirty? even if it was free you
wouldnt get me eating in here as i would be sick.
Gemini café clean your windows as its very off putting!

This is a great place to be though with some outdated ambience which could look a classic setting of a old café in England.
My favourite is the tuna salad though all the salads are very nurturing and tasty.
Also try the smoothies which is very good if u want to have a conversation and not to forget that all the hot beverages are equally good as Starbucks.
The best of the Gemini café is Bolognoise, chicken and lamb curry.
My friend used to say that omelette and chips are great too with other beverages.
The only disadvantage of the place is the seats which is torn and looks not cool.
Very cheap and healthy. — mY favourite affirdabke café overall though I’ve been to many in Oxford road.

I’m generally a fan of breakfast diners. This one is no different. I really love when they’re busy, that’s when you know it’s good and people come back.
As my first and possibly my only time here, the portions were good, decent price and food was good.
I like it, and if I’m in Manchester again, I’ll definitely come back here.

This place is mostly overlooked but is definitely the place to go for a cheap breakfast/​cheap lunch with an alright variety of food on offer. The atmosphere is rather dingy and its normally pretty dead but for an early morning meetup place for those who live in the Whitworth Park halls which surround it, it’s definitely worth a look into

I come here for my weekly full breakfast. It’s a hearty and delicious meal with all the essentials and represents great value (£4.75 with a slice of toast), as it means I can skip lunch for the day. The actual quality of the food varies (bacon can sometimes be overdone for example) but all in all a great feed.
Lady at the counter can be a bit friendlier though.

Gemini Café is brilliant. No, really it is. It looks really crappy from the outside and… well… it doesn’t get more exciting when you walk through the door.
However, Gemini is not about pretentious fine dining or eating locally grown magic sausages amongst faux chintzery in a leafy Manc ‘burb.
No. This is Manchester’s best greasy spoon and it is all the more wonderful for it.
The food is cheap as hell and is served so quickly that sometimes you may have vaguely formed the idea of what you might order in your brain before it hits the table.
Fantastic for when you’ve got a bone-​crunching hangover.
The people who go in there range from pimple faced students trying to stave off malnutrition or liver failure and old toothless women cackling to their mates about what happened at the bingo the night before.
I haven’t been in Gemini for years and writing this is making me want to go back.

Gemini looks popular and rightly so. This place is probably my favourite greasy spoon café in the whole city.
It particularly deserves this accolade because it caters superbly for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and even for coffees and snacks.
The fry ups are excellent, with plenty of everything, and all the sauces, for a couple of quid. I particularly recommend getting a brekkie with chips because the chips are amazing. Thin and crispy, a lot like McDonald’s chips but they taste healthier.
My favourite part of Gemini has to be the pie, chips and peas though. These are £2.40. That’s right, two measly pounds a couple of twenty pence pieces for your choice of pie, a generous helping of chips and some lovely mushy peas, topped with loads of gorgeous northern gravy. The perfect lunch.
They stay open in the early evening as well so if you’re around and fancy a cheap dinner, or need to eat while working in the library, it’s a great option. If you want a meal that will be more stimulating in terms of study then I’d recommend passing on the pie and going for one of their lovely massive jacket potatoes, though I must say the sheer size of these can have the effect of inducing lethargy.

Gemini Café knows its breakfast. The eggs are fried on a hot plate and are literally ladelled in hot fat, trust me — I’ve seen this with my own eyes. The baked beans look as though they’ve been dropped from the ceiling. The ketchup is Heinz, the brown sauce is HP. The mushrooms are big and beefy, the tomatoes seductively split and oozing. The hash browns glisten with promise. The coffee, and seriously this will be the best coffee you’ve ever tasted in your life, is liquid bliss with just the lightest kiss of foam. And what’s more, the veggie breakfast I’ve just described is yours for a mere £3.10. How can this be possible? Something so unadulterated, so unashamedly exquisite can surely not exist at so reasonable a price? Well here you have it, the Mecca of all cafés, quietly tucked away beneath Whitworth Park student halls of residence.
The décor is authentic American diner meets ‘Big Baps’ layby burger wagon. The atmosphere is George Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ meets Oldham’s Working Men’s club. Many a blasé remark as to how ‘terribly vile’ Jane Austen is have been made in the midst of Gemini Café. I hope many more will be spewed forth tomorrow morning when I meet my course mates there for our weekly breakfast date between lectures.

This place reminds me of a diner sort of place. With it’s benches-​like sitting and unlimited coffee all around, arouses anyone who enters upon here.
Sitting right on Oxford Road and under the Whitworth Halls, this place is very popular for breakfasts and especially lunches. I remember coming here many a times for some good lunch after the rough morning lectures which barely would keep me awake! I would recommend the fish and chips here, its just amazing! Crisp and soft and very very fresh! It’s a great lunch and keeps you full until dinner time altogther!
Great place and perfectly light on the pocket!

Every so often, we get so drunk that we don’t know what we’re eating. I eat like a little bird but pop a bowl of Doritos in front of me when I’ve had a few and I’ll munch them down faster that you can say, ‘I wanted one of those Chilli Heatwave triangles of deliciousness.’ You’d have a much better shot if they were Tangy Cheese, I’m not nearly as addicted to those.
When you’ve been that tipsy and perhaps avoided the eating-​like-​a-​maniac stage before you get yourself into bed, then chances are you’ll need something in the morning to settle that monster hangover. Gemini, located aptly on Student Central Boulevard Oxford Road and close to Fallowfield, is the ultimate greasy spoon. It’s the Southern Quarter’s Koffee Pot; the academic Essy’s. And the mixed reviews can easily be categorised. Not so good: went in with a fresh head. Great: went in with a need for Solpadine.
Did you ever see Heston Blumenthal whinging about the fact that the seats were torn and foam was coming out of them when he did his tour of Little Chefs? Well, he wouldn’t be too happy here. It’s tatty, perhaps overstepping the tatty mark just enough to leave behind retro charm and look just plain rough. That said, the walls and tables are blank spanking clean and that’s what’s important when all you want is something fried to make the pain go away. Home to students as well as all walks of life including the quintessential builders, mechanics and labourers. Heck, you could even be in Roy’s Rolls at this rate. Corrie reference, worry not. The atmosphere is down-​to-​earth and charming with a good deal of banter amongst staff and customers.
Full English and veggie options are less than a fiver, which you can’t argue with at all. It may not be skilful cooking you’re paying for here, but it does the job. Baked spuds, white bread sandwiches, egg and chips (my father’s favourite) are all available to munch and there’s plenty of ‘red sauce’ and brown sauce on every table to dollop all over your order. Drinks are little more than £2 with tea, coffee, hot chocolate and milkshakes. You’re hardly likely to find your organic ginger and bergamot blend here but again, that’s what Gemini’s all about.
This is no frills with added… lack of frills. Plain, simple and straightforward, you’ll leave Gemini with a full belly and plenty of change to boot.

I don’t go to Gemini often: I live too far away from Oxford Road to make a journey specially to visit this little café. But when I am near, and want a traditional English brekkie in town, Gemini certainly comes to mind. The café is placed in a distance from the road, but close enough to bus stops towards city centre or Didsbury. And you can contemplate the magnificent edifice of the Manchester Royal Infirmary across the road. OK, this might not sound like the most exciting thing to do, but wait until you see it with your own eyes. And if it’s still not exciting, then watching yourself in small mirrors on the wall may be the way to spend your time while waiting for the order. Beware, though: it does arrive quickly and is very good.

For many nights out in Manchester have become ritual. Whether you’re flicking though cocktail menus in the Coco Rooms, slinking around the Northern Quarter in your skinny jeans, bouncing the hours away in a Printworks’ superclub or simply having a good old pint in a good old pub, there is only one place to unjumble your thoughts and settle your stomach in the harsh light of day — Gemini on Oxford road.
A diamond in the rough, Gemini offers tasty, no nonsense grub at a reasonable price for those weak, weary and humble of pocket. Their fry ups are legendary and for good reason, with crispy bacon, runny eggs and plenty of tea and toast to wash it all down with. For veggies there is a meat-​free full English as well as range of pastries and a various combinations of beans, eggs and toast on offer. The café itself is pretty shabby with worn and dated décor, so if you want to dine in style I’d head into town — but if you like your spoon greasy, Gemini is for you.

Gemini is a gem of a café. Great fry up. Cheap as chips. Fast pleasant service. Really clean.

My friends and I used to call this place Gemini Café but since they added the accent on their new signage I suppose we should call it Gemini Caffaay now.
This place should by no means be confused with Gemini Takeaway which is located at the other side of the Whitworth Park entrance — they are not affiliated. Obviously different groups have different pet names for their favourite and least favourite establishments, but unlike Rebecca my group called the takeaway ‘Dirty Gemini’. For us, Gemini Café was anything but dirty.
It was part of our weekly ritual — more so than anything else, including lectures. Every Sunday at midday for two years we would head down to Gemini Café for brunch. I usually spent between £3 and £4 for their veggie breakfast and a large latte. Other dishes I have sampled include jacket potatoes with various fillings, tuna sandwiches (cheaper than buying a can of tuna and making a sandwich) and pizza. I’ve never been disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been thrilled either, but the food has always been tasty and importantly for a hungover student or hungry builder, filling.
The staff were always shouting at each other and shouting out order numbers to builders who were obliviously reading the Sun or staring out of the window. There was a very high staff turnover, therefore no-​one really seemed to know what they were doing. However, to say that there were sometimes up to 15 of us who would meet for brunch, we always got what we ordered and it was always hot. I wish I was a student again, I miss Gemini.

I just got back from a tasty lunch at Gemini, or Dirty Gem’s, as myself and Curly Friend call it. Dirty Gem’s is the absolute epitome of what you shouldn’t be eating; fried sausages, salty chips, piles of beans and ‘meat’ pies. And the best bacon you’ll ever have.
I have a lot of love for this little greasy spoon. There’s no pretence here, amongst the worn-​out vinyl cafeteria tables and sticky HP sauce bottles. It’s a totally honest caff that serves greasy nosh at low prices. My favourite, the guilty pleasure bacon, sausage, chips and beans, will set you back a mere £4 and keep you full up long into the afternoon. Curly Friend always favours a fried egg over the sausages, and though I am not a fan of fried eggs, they always seem to be pretty perfect; plenty of runny yolk to dip your chips in.
There’s plenty here for those who don’t want a classic bean/​chip/​meat combo. You can grab a pizza or pasta dish for around £4. Be warned though; they rarely actually have these to hand, and you could end up waiting awhile for your tuna pasta.
The staff here are brusque, verging on incompetent and pretty unhelpful. But that doesn’t matter, because Gem’s is all about honesty and being down to earth. I don’t think I’d want an over-​attentive waitress pandering to my needs; I’ve got my sausages, I’m fine thanks!
As well as a great array of food, Gem’s offers a great hot drink menu, with their hot chocolate being a firm favourite, and the coffee erring on the right side of strong.
In my student radio days, I had a 10am Monday slot with Shambolic Friend. We’d meet at 9 every Monday at Gem’s to plan the show ahead over a plate of cheese on toast. These days I try and make a lunch date with Curly Friend, usually spent bitching and gossiping. Gem’s is a great place to meet friends and eat greasy, yet wholly satisyfing, grub.

I just had to add my two cents to this place. I spent probably far too often here in my first year, savouring the delights of full-​English breakfasts and Crusha milkshakes. I probably narrowly avoided developing crippling lung cancer as well, as this was before the smoking ban came into place and therefore it was always full of a variety of builders, doctors, nurses and other workers, coughing and spluttering their way through another pack of twenty before they headed back to the daily grind.
It is, however, a guilty treat every now-​and-​then, as the food is cheap and greasy enough to fulfill that little part of you that craves non-​conformity. Healthy heart advice be damned! I want my bacon toasties now!
I haven’t been recently, as my friend became paranoid about the effect it was having on him, but talking about it is making me hungry. I guess I can chance another visit…

Bang opposite the children’s hospital sits Gemini Café. NHS workers flood the place at lunch time or those peculiar breaks they get in their uneven work hours, half dead students flock the counter pointing randomly at food that they want and wised up locals sits quietly considering the bustling street scene through the pane glass windows.
You’ve seen the place a million times from films like Quadrophenia, Layer Cake and this is England. It’s where everyone goes when they want a greasy fry up or just a cup of tea. The place looks like it hasn’t changed since it was built in the 80s and this is what makes it stand out, you step into a time machine and start looking for the mods or punks fashioning doc martins or something.
The foods the stuff you love, no thrills cheese on toast, big breakfasts and HP brown sauce on every table. They do good milkshakes that make you sad as you think how you just drank £1.50 in 30 seconds. Great for considering your place in the universe… with a bacon sandwich.