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/