Richmond Tea Rooms

46 Sackville Street, Manchester

Step inside the wonderful world of Richmond Tea Rooms. An enchanting, all-encapsulating Alice In Wonderland themed tea room with red velvet suites, hanging trees and a diverse menu, it’s quirky yet traditional.

Its name comes from its origins in Richmond Street, but they’ve recently migrated to a larger venue, just round the corner on Sackville Street. They may have grown in size, but they’ve retained every ounce of the character and ambience that came with the original.

Richmond Tea Rooms

Serving up breakfast, sandwiches, cakes, cocktails and afternoon teas all day long, it’s the best a good old fashioned tea room can be. Breakfast can take the form of anything from a Full English or a bacon sandwich to porridge or French toast. For lunch, there’s a selection of hot and cold sandwiches, light meals and salads, including the creatively named ‘Tweedle Dum’, which is a Croque Madame to you and I.

I’d eaten at the old Richmond Street venue several years ago, but my friend had never been before, so it was a new experience for the two of us, albeit for different reasons. The new entrance is truly stunning. You climb the stairs into The Tea Room, where you’re greeted by a member of staff on the front desk, cleverly placed in front of the cake fridge, which means the sweet treats are the first thing you clap eyes on.

Bookings are only taken for parties of four of more. There were only two of us and we were informed there would be a 45 minute wait. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t wait so long, but as we had our hearts set on this place, we decided to go with it. Given that it was 1:00pm on a Saturday, it could have been worse. We took a seat in the bar area and read the menu, but we ended up being shown to a table after 15 minutes, so you really can’t complain.

Inside Richmond Tea Rooms

I do get frustrated when places don’t allow bookings. In the city centre, there are hundreds of places you can choose to eat, so I find it slightly arrogant when restaurants think it’s acceptable to make customers wait for up to an hour, or perhaps longer. Why would I do that when I can just as easily go somewhere else? Enthusiastic, paying customers should be allowed to reserve a table.

My friend and I were both after a light lunch, so we opted for sandwiches. I had the Veggie Club, which was Mediterranean vegetables with goats cheese, sun-blushed tomatoes and pesto mayonnaise. It came served on a choice of white bread, brown bread or ciabatta. I opted for the latter, which was soft and warm. It was packed full of delicious roasted vegetables and was very colourful and tasty. The goats cheese wasn’t overpowering, but instead was subtle. I adore pesto, however, this was sun dried tomato pesto rather than the green version, traditionally made from basil, garlic, pine nuts and Parmesan cheese. It was a nice flavour but I could have done with a little bit more of it.

Veggie Club

My friend had the Richmond Club, which was your traditional club sandwich: a triple-decker layered with chicken, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise. Three layers of toast with chicken and bacon can often mean a club sandwich is dry and difficult to digest, which is off-putting. However, the generous helping of mayonnaise kept the Richmond Club moist and made for an excellent attempt at this classic sarnie.

Richmond Club

All the sandwiches are beautifully presented, served on willow-patterned plates with salad and a handful of crisps. They’re all very reasonably priced too – they were both £8.95.

There are several versions of afternoon tea available to order. The most extravagant of them all, the Richmond Tea (£24.95 per person) includes finger sandwiches, canapes, scones with jam and clotted cream, a selection of cakes and a glass of champagne. The Alice Tea is your good old-fashioned cream tea, whilst the Gentleman’s Tea consists of a mini cheeseburger, chips, Welsh rarebit and a Scotch egg, with a scone and a chocolate brownie to take care of the sweet side of things (£26.95). I wouldn’t mind giving this a go.

We purposely opted for a light lunch to save room for one of their magnificent looking cakes. Now if there’s one rule I need to get me through life, it’s that you can’t have cake without tea. Frankly, it should be illegal. There’s a whole page of the menu dedicated to tea, with a vast array of intriguing blends, including Liquorice, Red Berries and Peppermint Black. For me, there’s only one blend of tea and that’s that the traditional English Breakfast. A pot for two was £6.20, which is pricey, but we did get three cups each out of it, so there was more than enough to see us through our generous slices of cake.

The Cake Cabinet

Cakes are £5.50 per slice, which is reasonable given the size of them. Desserts in city centre restaurants are frequently more expensive and the portions don’t compare. I had a piece of carrot cake, one of my all-time favourites. There were three layers of dense, but not dry, sponge, packed full of juicy sultanas and carrot zest, layered with cream cheese frosting and decorated with iced carrots, piped in orange and green.

My friend’s cake was a new one on me: Boston Cream Cake. It was a light vanilla sponge layered with crème patisserie, topped with velvety chocolate ganache and white chocolate shavings. It was simple yet delicious and not overly sweet, certainly one to try in the future.  

Boston Cream Cake and Carrot Cake

Tables are allocated in two hour slots, which was more than enough time for us to get through our sandwiches and cakes as the service was good.

I fell in love with Richmond Tea Rooms and I can’t wait to return. With the selection of cakes changing regularly and plenty of choice on the menu, it’s a gem that’s sure to become one of my favourite hang outs for midday meet-ups in the city centre.

Tables can be reserved for parties of four or above.

All menus are available at: https://www.richmondtearooms.com/

Quote of the Week - Week commencing Monday 24 June 2019

"If eating cake is wrong, I don't want to be right." 

Lorelai Gilmore of Gilmore Girls

Slattery's Chocolate Afternoon Tea

Bury New Road, Whitefield

Another week, another afternoon tea.

I recently wrote about how much I enjoyed a quirky take on the traditional afternoon tea when I visited One88 for a ‘Gentleman’s’ alternative, complete with pork pies, sausage rolls and fish goujons.

Last week, I hopped across the road to the local Willy Wonka emporium that is Slattery’s, the magical and mystical chocolatier that never fails to bring a touch of magic to your day.

I’ve previously had the Lancashire Afternoon Tea, served daily from 10:30am in the Masons Dining Room, but I’ve long since wanted to try their ‘luxury’ chocolate version. It’s not far removed from your traditional afternoon tea: it’s still sandwiches, scones and cakes but with the emphasis firmly on their creamy blend of chocolate.

Served on a traditional three-tiered cake stand, it’s beautifully presented and looks every bit as decadent as you’d expect. There are simple but tasty finger sandwiches: ham and cheddar cheese, poached salmon and cucumber, turkey and stuffing and coronation chicken. Classic, quintessentially British flavours which you just can’t really go wrong with. The sandwiches were fresh, the bread was soft and there was plenty of filling. There was also a savoury cheese and onion tartlet: a mix of grated cheese, onion and mayonnaise scooped inside a mini shortcrust pastry case.

On the middle tier was a homemade chocolate chip scone, served with butter, raspberry preserve and clotted cream. I wasn’t sure a chocolate chip scone would entirely work: the juicy sultanas are normally the selling point of a scone for me. And then there was the question of whether or not the jam and cream would work with the chocolate chips? Surprisingly, it actually works very well.

The scones weren’t the best I’ve ever tasted, which was quite a shock, as, ordinarily, nobody does cakes quite like Slattery’s. However, they were packed full of tasty chocolate chips. I failed to exercise any form of self-control with the clotted cream and scooped heaps of it onto each half of my scone (but always jam first).

The top tier, the piece de resistance of an afternoon tea, was literally choc-full of deliciousness. There was a profiterole, half-dipped in milk chocolate, a strawberries and cream pot, which was a pot of white chocolate filled with strawberry jam and whipped cream, a decadent slice of rich Baileys gateaux and one of Slattery’s signature chocolate pots filled with melted chocolate, accompanied by fresh strawberries for dipping.

I went straight in with the chocolate and strawberries so I could devour the liquid chocolate whilst it was still warm, then left the remains to crystallise, making for a delicious thick layer of chocolate upon chocolate to finish on a high. The strawberries and cream pot was disappointing, as it was essentially just a white chocolate pot filled with whipped cream and a minuscule amount of jam. I was expecting something a little more exciting.

After the clotted cream on the scone and the cream inside the profiterole, additional cream was certainly not necessary. My favourite Slattery’s desert, the Wicked Chocolate Sampler, consists of four mini chocolate cakes, including a Millionaire’s shortbread and a chocolate orange brownie, so they’re certainly not short of chocolate miniatures. It would have been much better to include something like this, with more texture, taste and substance, than another round of chocolate and cream. The Baileys slice only served to emphasise these thoughts further, as it was delicious and certainly the most enjoyable of the sweet treats. Given the vast array of chocolate cakes that Slattery produce on a daily basis, more miniatures are definitely needed on this afternoon tea.

For £19.50 per person, the afternoon tea comes with a choice of hot chocolate, milkshake or pot of tea. It’s not expensive but it’s not the best value for money when you consider how much you’d pay for a lunchtime sandwich, all of which are generously portioned with plenty of fresh salad. The Wicked Chocolate Sampler is more satisfying and only £6.95.

It pains me to find fault with anything about Slattery’s. It’s my adopted second home and I absolutely love dining here. To say it was disappointing would be unfair, as it was perfectly enjoyable and deliciously indulgent.

Any fellow chocaholic should give the Chocolate Afternoon Tea a try.

Unusually, you don’t have to pre-order the afternoon tea in advance, you can simply select it from the menu on the day. However, booking a table is absolutely necessary.

Website: https://slattery.co.uk/masons-dining-room

Email: mgfoodie100@gmail.com

Quote of the Week - Week commencing Monday 17 June 2019

"The tradition of the Sunday feast accomplishes more than just feeding us. It nurtures us." 

John Besh

Chef 

The Pasta Factory

Shudehill, Manchester

The Pasta Factory: ‘fresco, tradizionale, Italiano’. That’s ‘fresh, traditional, Italian’ to you and I. It’s an independent Italian restaurant which specialises in fresh, homemade, authentic pasta. Their mission is to ensure all customers enjoy the best plate of pasta they can possibly create.

Pasta is one of my all-time favourite foods. There’s so much you can do with it, there’s always a new recipe waiting to be discovered. A dish of pasta at a top quality Italian restaurant is one of the best dining experiences you can have. With so many high-end Italian restaurants in Manchester City Centre, including Rosso and Piccolino, there’s a lot of competition.

The Pasta Factory has a very authentic interior. It’s nothing special, with wooden tables and an open kitchen, with the various varieties of the freshly prepared pasta on display. There are no table cloths, just paper place settings adorned with the logo. The leather chairs are looking rather tatty and desperately need replacing.

It’s a fairly limited menu, with half a dozen starters and a few more main courses, as well as a specials board and a range of wine recommendations.

We ordered two starters and sampled each of them in turn. One of them was the weekly special, Salt Cod Fritters. The fried balls of cod were tasty enough but a little bit dry. They needed a dip to accompany them. The side salad was very basic, little more than a few lettuce leaves. It was limp and lacking dressing.

Salt Cod Fritters

Our second starter was Panelle Con Salsa Rustica. Panelle is a traditional street food made from chickpea flour. Despite originally being of Arab origin, they are popular in Palermo, where they are often eaten inside a bread roll, like a sandwich. Here, they were topped with a salsa made of tomatoes, spring onions, capers, olives, green chillies and fresh herbs, drizzled with cashew cream. They made for a very light starter. Without the salsa, I can imagine they’d be very dry and bland. Both starters were £7.50, which was steep for what they were.

Panelle Con Salsa Rustica

For main course, I had ‘Triangoli di Funghi in Salsa al Tartufo’: triangular green ravioli filled with mushrooms, garlic, parsley and cashews. It was very flavoursome, but the texture of the ravioli was a little hard. To me, it tasted like it needed cooking for longer in order to make it just that little bit softer. Alas, I’m no expert and I trust the chefs at a place called The Pasta Factory to get it right, it’s just a case of personal preference. It was dressed in a black truffle and porcini sauce, which was rich and creamy, topped off with a piedmont black truffle.

Triangoli di Fungi in Salsa al Tartufo

It was a very small portion; I was trying to eat it slowly in the hope of making it last. More ravioli was definitely needed for £13.50. Black truffles are very expensive, but even so, there wasn’t enough pasta for the price.

My dining companion had ‘Gemelli Con Copanata Di Verdure’: pasta twists with a medley of vegetables including peppers, aubergines, zucchini, peppers and onions tossed in extra virgin olive oil with sage and rosemary. This was a better portion size than my ravioli and looked very colourful, tasty and appealing, but it was still £11.00, which is too expensive for a vegetable pasta dish.

Gemelli Con Cpaanata Di Verdure

Both the main courses were vegan friendly.

I noticed that we weren’t offered any parmesan to top our spaghetti. To me, this seems like an alien concept, as any Italian restaurant in this country readily throws varying quantities of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on top of any pasta dish. However, this is a mythical custom which isn’t actually a part of Italian culture, but has become the norm just about everywhere else.

I was nowhere near satisfied after my two courses, so I had to sample something from the intriguing dessert menu. I had ‘Ravioli di Cioccolato Mandorle E Amaretti’: satin chocolate ravioli filled with almonds and amaretti biscuits, served warm with orange cream and sprinkled with toasted pine nuts. Okay, so a little bit of forward planning in order to avoid two rounds of ravioli might have been a good idea, but – if you’ll pardon the expression – it was a case of ‘when in Rome’.

It was a rather strange concept that tricked your taste buds. The texture was the same as that of a savoury ravioli. The amaretti and almond filling meant that the chocolate flavour wasn’t overly sweet. I was expecting the ‘orange cream’ to be orange flavoured whipped cream, but instead it was pouring cream. A thicker cream would have complemented the ravioli better.

Ravioli di Cioccolato Mandorle E Amaretti

When it comes to the overall verdict, the jury is still very much out. It was unique, it was tasty and it was different, but I’m not sure I’d jump at the chance to have it again.

The Nutella Cannoli were delicious. The pastry shells were delightfully crispy and airy and there was ample filling.

Nutella Cannoli 

I couldn’t fault the service; the food arrived quickly and the staff were friendly and attentive. The interior looks a bit shabby and is screaming out for a revamp. The tables are far too close together; you feel like you’re sat on top of the people at the adjacent tables, you’re even able to hear their conversations.

If, like me, you’re a pasta lover, then The Pasta Factory is a dining experience I’d encourage you to try. It’s authentic, fresh and tasty, but the portion sizes definitely need to be increased and the prices reduced slightly. It was expensive for what it was and you can definitely get better pasta elsewhere.

Website: http://www.pastafactory.co.uk/

Email: mgfoodie100@gmail.com

Quote of the Week - Week commencing Monday 10 June 2019

"You can be miserable before you have a cookie and you can be miserable after you eat a cookie, but you can't be miserable while you are eating a cookie."

 Ina Garten

American author and cookery show host

Scene Indian Kitchen

Leftbank, Spinningfields, Manchester

Scene is an Indian restaurant which specialises in authentic street food. It offers something a little bit different from your traditional Indian restaurant, including Thali lunch boxes and Indian samosa burgers, which sound more than a little intriguing.

Tucked away on Leftbank, a quieter area of the bustling dining and drinking hub that is Spinningfields, this halal restaurant has numerous different spaces which allow catering for parties and corporate events. The main dining room captures the spirit of the subcontinent, with shack-style booth seating and artwork from Mancunian artists adorning the walls.  

The front-of-house Garden Veranda delivers street food bites, decadent desserts and shisha from 4.00pm onwards, whilst the Riverside Terrace plays host to barbecues in the summer.

We visited scene at lunchtime on a Bank Holiday Monday. It was surprisingly quiet for the Spring Bank Holiday, but it made for a relaxing lunch.

Scene was sold to me on the premise of their lunchtime offering: Thali plates. This is the cornerstone of Indian street food and is enjoyed regularly both on the streets and in homes on the subcontinent. It’s essentially an Indian buffet for one, showcasing a range of aromas, textures and flavours with several small dishes served on a platter in katori bowls.

Here’s how it works. A curry dish sits at the heart of your platter. You can choose from Karahi, a spicy dish prepared with capsicum peppers, prepared with chicken, lamb or vegetables, Makhani, a creamy dish cooked with tomatoes and butter, and a spiced chickpea curry. Look out for the chilli ratings on the menu, as they’re all described as being ‘medium’ or ‘hot’. I ordered the Mixed Vegetable Karahi but requested a mild version, which they were happy to make.

Once you’ve picked your main course, you can leave the rest of the meal up to the chef. Alongside your curry is a poppadum and a yoghurt and lime dip, an onion bhaji, one of the best I’ve ever had, chopped salad, brown pilau rice, a mini Naan bread and a vegetable speciality.

Thali Lunch Platter

The onion bhaji was perfectly cooked, one of the best I’ve ever tasted and the yoghurt and lime dip was zingy, creamy and refreshing. It complimented the spiciness of the curry extremely well, making it much easier for a delicate palate such as mine.

I’ve never had brown pilau rice with an Indian meal before but I actually preferred it to the white alternative. It was much lighter and less stodgy with more taste. I can take or leave Naan bread, especially a plain one, but it’s nice to have something to mop up all the tasty sauces from the dishes.

I love the concept of the Thali lunch boxes. It’s an entirely different way to experience Indian dining. It’s always nice to be able to try a range of different flavours, rather than restricting yourself to one curry, and having lots of little bits means you’re not overly full. It’s an ingenious idea for lunchtime. Priced at just £8.95 for my platter, including a soft drink, it was sensational value, meaning you can enjoy an exotic lunch at a far from exotic price.

The Thali boxes aren’t the only unique meals served at Scene. The lunch menu also offers burgers with an Indian twist as east meets west. One of my dining companions had the Ultimate Chicken and Samosa Burger: a grilled chicken patty and a vegetable samosa in a bun with melted cheese, Indian sauces and salad. It was towered high and very tasty. It wasn’t too spicy but had a distinctive Indian flavour. It was also refreshing to see a burger served on a good old-fashioned seeded bun. When did brioche become a pre-requisite?

Ultimate Chicken Samosa Burger

Indian restaurants tend not to make much of an effort with their desserts, but at Scene there’s a range of traditional Indian sweets, including Gulab Jumin, a milk-based dessert flavoured with almonds, and Gulab Jaman Cheesecake, an Indian take on my all-time favourite. Sadly, after demolishing the Thali box, I was too full to fit one in, but there’s always next time.

If you want to add a little bit of spice to your lunch hour, Scene is the perfect place to tuck into an alternative to your sandwiches. It’s a completely different way to experience Indian cuisine. It’s sensational value too. You’d pay the same price for a sandwich and a coffee at most of these trendy coffee shops.

Daytime and evening menus are all available here:  https://www.scenedining.com/menus/

Email: mgfoodie100@gmail.com 

Quote of the Week - Week commencing Monday 3 June 2019

This week's food quote comes from the legend that is Paul O'Grady, speaking yesterday on his BBC Radio 2 show about the latest food trends...

"Last year it was pulled pork, now it's sourdough. Whatever happened to white sliced bread?"

Paul O'Grady