Musicana Cafe

Musicana has recently been through a makeover! And the makeover is totally amazing! I think this is the best place all over Rusholme, in the ambience and décor aspect!
Earllier if you wanted to do some shisha, you had sit outside, though of course you are surrounded by heaters, during those cold winter months, you would kill be inside. Now, you can sit inside and do what you like best! The inside is beautifully made with only candle lights as a source of visible light. It’s lovely to come here with friends or even have a late romantic coffee or dessert.
With my friends staying just above this place, I’m often here lounging and doing some Shisha. It’s a great little place and has the best cream banana split ever! Thinking of it makes me want to run to it!

I’m not a shisha expert by any means, but I do know when a café is a decent little spot to spend some time wiling away the hours, and Musicana Café is one such place. Since the smoking ban rocketed its way into the public domain, the shisha bars in Rusholme have been forced to become open affairs or risk continuous fines. Musicana Café is open, but has heated patios which is a nice little touch.
As a café, it’s a mixed bag; the drinks are great, but the food is so-​so. The prices are reasonable all round though, whether drinking, eating or smoking, so this offsets the few hiccups along the way. There are a fair few shisha bars to pick from in Rusholme, but Musicana Café is probably one of the better ones you could choose.

Musicana is primarily a shisha bar, yet I’d made several visits to this Rusholme café before I even had the chance to sample the vast array of shisha available there. This is mainly as my uni friends are all smoking Nazis and shisha contains four times as much carbon monoxide as cigarettes, don’t you know. They’re right. Either way, I sampled the coffees, smoothies and juices and they were all tasty and good value for money — highly recommended if you fancy a sociable drink but want a change from your local pub.
It wasn’t until the friend who I smoked shisha with in Germany’s brilliant shisha cafés came to visit that I was able to try the shisha on offer here. We sampled the apple shisha as it was on special offer. We very much enjoyed the lovely fruity clouds that Rebecca describes. The staff could obviously see this, and gave us more for free (it was pretty dead in there). The combination of the fruity clouds, cosy blankets, warm patio heaters, strong coffee and excellent people watching opportunities encouraged us to linger for a couple of hours. The whole experience only set us back £10 between us including the shisha and 4 hot drinks. It’s one of those places where you have to pay at the counter so don’t wait around for your bill. Dress for the Mancunian weather, as there is this place strictly adheres to the smoking ban (unlike various other shisha places) so smoking is only permitted in the covered outdoor area.
They also serve food, but I wouldn’t recommend going there if you’re after for gourmet grub. The chips are standard and the falafel is not as good as what’s on offer at Falafel a couple of doors down.

Ahhhh, shisha! I love shisha. And I really love a shisha café that serves super-​sweet mint tea, and provides you with heaters AND a nice soft blanket to keep you warm in the winter months (damn you, smoking ban!) and that has a wide and varied range of tasty fruity shishas. And that is why I love Musicana.
It’s a dark, unassuming place with a fenced-​in pavement area for the smokers, and the inside is usually fairly busy, despite the fact that it doesn’t serve any booze. This is a great seal of approval; the ambience here is so good that people who don’t even want to smoke shisha come here, just to sip tea and hang out.
The shishas on offer range from peach to red apple to strawberry, and though the main thrust is towards juicy fruit flavours, they also occasionally have cinnamon, which is amazing and which I have only ever been able to track down in Camden. For this reason alone, I usually pop in whenever I’m in Rusholme for a curry. Actually, on that note; shisha is absolutely key to any trip-​out-​for-​a-​curry.
Even non-​smokers can enjoy shisha. It’s *nothing* like smoking a cigarette; it tastes nice and it feels like you’re just inhaling lovely fruity clouds. Which, of course, you are. Lovely fruity clouds. And for about a fiver a pipe, you can’t argue!
Musicana is the best Manchester shisha café I’ve ever been to, and I’m not the only one who thinks so; it’s usually quite busy and has a big audience from the Rusholme community. Still, it’s surprisingly spacious and they always try their best to squeeze you in if you pop in for a pipe.

Musicana café seems like a buzzing place whenever you sit down, whether it’s because of the people actually in there, or the folk jamming into the bus stop on the road I’ve not been able to deduce yet. This smoky shisha is nice though for watching the time go by. Heated outdoor patios mean you can sit in the frigid cold outside quite comfortably and there’s a huge arrange of flavoured smoke to puff on. There’s some great Middle Eastern cuisine to nibble on as well; the staff are relaxed but helpful. Be warned though smoking ban indoors means that it can be a tad dodgy.