00:00 It's afternoon tea week this week from the 7th to the 13th of August and we are here in the heart
00:05 of Manchester at Richmond Tea Rooms, a whimsical venue inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Anyway,
00:11 can't be late, the Mad Hatter will start without me!
00:13 Okay so this is all Alice in Wonderland themed. We offer afternoon tea all day, every day. We
00:24 offer different levels of afternoon tea, so depending if you want to like come in to get
00:27 some scones, we do like yeah sandwiches and scones and then we also do like the full high tea as well.
00:32 I think what sets us apart as well we also do our like events which is like Mad Hatter's Tea
00:38 Party, so we have like performers who come in, you have a bit of afternoon tea, play like games,
00:42 prizes, very very crazy. What was the inspiration behind the Alice in Wonderland theme? It was from
00:49 the owners Nick and Andrew and obviously if you think of afternoon tea, think of Alice in
00:54 Wonderland Mad Hatter's Tea Parties, so they just took the theme and just blew it off and went with
00:59 it. What's the reaction when people come in and see all these amazing fairy lights and all of the
01:04 flowers, how do they normally react? They are literally like in awe like of the venue like
01:10 it's because it's so like decorated so lovely, it's very Instagramable, people love taking
01:15 pictures, just wandering around, it's like literally stepping into Alice in Wonderland.
01:20 The venue was named as number 43 on the list of top 50 most Instagramable cafes in the world
01:27 according to global travel site Big 7 Travel. Of course we had to get a taste of their
01:32 quintessentially British afternoon tea, complete with cocktails in china cups.
01:37 We do offer a few selections, we've tried to like do like, it depends how much food people want to
01:41 eat really, you can start off as I said with like we do scones with a pot of tea and then we also
01:46 like do a Hatter's tea, so all our afternoon tea is named after Alice in Wonderland characters, so
01:51 Alice tea, Hatter's tea, Queen's tea, so your Queen's tea would be like your full high tea,
01:58 scones, sandwiches, cakes and a pot of tea. And what is the most popular one out of those?
02:03 I think the Queen's one, people like to come in for cakes if you're going to come out and just
02:06 get the full work. Okay so are there any other like quirky elements to the afternoon tea or is
02:10 it just come in sit down and have the food? People come in sometimes like oh we thought
02:13 you'd all be dressed up, I'm like no, it's not quite like that because obviously we're like a
02:18 queer venue, we're in Manchester's gay village, around Pride as well we have a lot of characters
02:22 running around so that's more immersive for people and we tend to love that. I really love teas,
02:26 like a lot of people come in and they're like I don't like tea and I'm like well you're in the
02:29 wrong place for that, I've got loads of facts about tea that I'll bore the customers with.
02:33 All tea comes from the same plant, I think people like think there's like a green tea plant,
02:37 a black tea plant, it comes from the same plant, I think that's very interesting. I didn't know
02:41 that, that's an interesting tea fact. It is very interesting, it's like different
02:45 oxidation levels so your green tea is like not oxidised at all and then black tea is like
02:50 complete oxidisation, turns brown, different flavours. It speaks for itself really, we have
02:55 lots of returning people. In fact one woman came in, she's like I test scones professionally and
02:59 yours is one of the best and I was like I need to see some credentials because that's a good
03:03 good statement.
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