Roses Tea Room afternoon tea _460
“It gives you a wonderful opportunity to meet friends or celebrate, Mother’s Day for instance, without drinking or going to a pub, although it can come with Champagne,” says Bernadette Bennett, who makes afternoon tea for the Hope Street restaurant.
“It’s very ceremonial and sociable – you have to keep talking and passing things to each other.”
Betty’s Tea Rooms, in Yorkshire, where her husband’s from, set the benchmark for her menu, rich in textures and flavours.
She serves platters of Cain’s raisin beer cake, lemon drizzle cake with caraway seeds, tiny, light-as-air scones, nutty carrot cake with pecan nuts and maple syrup and wonderfully chewy macaroons with rosewater. “I like using local, seasonal ingredients, like rhubarb, and subtly back fragranced with exotic ingredients such as cardamom,” she says.
She suggests bland sandwiches like the traditional cucumber, cut into crustless rectangles.
“Strong flavours like beef and mustard or salmon, can be overpowering if you’re eating a dainty cake afterwards.
“Above all it should be a treat where you indulge yourself with food you wouldn’t eat every day.”
Come on ladies, who’s going to play mother?
LONDON Carriage Works, 40, Hope Street, Liverpool www.hopestreethotel.co.uk
ROSES Tea Rooms, 23, Milner Road, Heswall. www.rosestearooms.co.uk