TL;DR - Great local coffee joint, bringing a Northern Quarter vibe to Prestwich and Whitefield.
Moonbeam suddenly appeared out of the blue and was a really welcome surprise. It's located on Bury Old Road in a mainly residential area, although there is a run of shops along the high street. It's also about 3 minutes' walk from Besses o' th' Barn tram stop, and right next to a stop for the 135 bus between Bury and Manchester.
From the outside it looks fairly small, but we were pleasantly surprised to discover they also have upstairs seating so they were able to squeeze us in for brunch on a busy day. The menu is pretty typical of a modern coffee shop of the sort you'd find in the Northern Quarter. We both went for the black pudding hash and it was delicious. Judging by the folks seated around us, the pancake options are also really popular. We went for lattes to drink and their barista's did them proud.
There's only a couple of reasons why we didn't give them five stars. The first is that there's something weird with the acoustics upstairs and we found it really hard to hear each other, the voices of the other customers were really loud and echoey. Also, it was quite busy when we arrived and we had to wait about half an hour between ordering and food arriving. A minor grumble, and certainly won't stop us coming back again. read more