Cakes Ale Cafe - Carlisle

Stop here either before or after visiting the bookshop. Friendly staff and lots of different places to sit.

We had a lovely lunch here out in the sunny garden today. The service was efficient and friendly and our food was great. The cafe was clearly slightly short staffed as tables weren't getting cleared quickly, but the staff were relaxed and calm and food arrived very quickly even if no one came to check on how our food was....it was lovely and we didn't need anything, but a check would have been good had we needed it. The garden was lovely and the book shop itself was amazing and made for somewhere really interesting to dine for excellent seasonal food and generous portions. We didn't have room for cake but they looked amaaazing!!

I used to love this place, the quirkiness, the food, the service. Now the service is not as friendly and the food was terrible last time I was there. DO NOT try the breakfast butty. I have to say it was the worst I have ever been served. Management really need to take these reviews on board and save this place.

Poor slow service. Vegan cakes tasted stodgy and stale. Limited menu. About 3 ciabbatas and 2 salads. Overpriced. Poor selection of menu items. Best avoided.

We stumbled upon this lovely looking cafe with a beautiful secret garden whilst on a day trip to Carlisle. We arrived a few minutes before 3pm and were given a bunch of menus by a sullen teenage waitress. She told us to take a seat and someone would be over to serve us. We took a seat in the garden and waited for service. They were quite busy, so it was a while before anyone came over to serve us. We were then told that they had now stopped serving food as it was after 3pm (by a couple of minutes) and they stopped serving food an hour before closing at 4pm. We explained that we had been there since before 3pm and that all we were looking for was a couple of sandwiches. The pleasant waitress said she would ask the kitchen if it was ok. I assumed that, good sense and a modern customer service attitude, would mean we’d get our sandwiches. Sadly the embarrassed waitress had to come back and tell us that the kitchen had said no. If we had been told that food was stopping at three we’d have given our order straight away, rather then wait ten minutes for nothing. We left straight away. It’s a lovely cafe but it’s old fashioned charm seems to be matched with an old-fashioned “clock-watching” attitude to customers. Really disappointing and we won’t be back. It was just embarrassing really.