Tender

Afternoon tea. The great British tradition. Founded in the 1800s as a way to bridge the gap between lunch and a late dinner, it soon became a vehicle for Edwardians to show off. No attention to detail was spared, and whoever had the best china and table dressings won the popularity contest.

If this were still the case now, Niall Keating would be the most popular kid in class.

Keating’s restaurant at the Stock Exchange Hotel, Tender, has launched an afternoon tea service. The menu is a sort of medieval story book-cum-Bible. It’s decadent, it’s detailed, and it’s very, very British. However, before the menu is within arm’s reach, we’re greeted with a glass of Collet Brut Rosé, and 3 members of the Hallé Orchestra’s string section. 

We’re seated, and it’s time for the titular event. Tea. 

The table politics of Yorkshire v. Tetley are wiped from the plate when the Stock Exchange’s “1906” blend is poured out. The leaves are from bushes planted at the turn of the century: over 100 years old. This is tea as it tasted in 1906. This is tea as it was drank by our Manc predecessors and ancestors a century ago. This is proper tea. Keep your builders’.

As a wild card, I also get the Radiant Rose blend. I don’t even like rose. Maybe it was some sort of challenge: ‘let’s see how clever you are, now’. Pretty clever, to be fair. Floral, without the dust-gathering, perfumery notes, it genuinely rivals the “1906”. 

Then, the three-tier stands arrive. The staff are so well-drilled, it’s almost like choreography. The layers stay true to tradition: scones on top, sandwiches and sausage rolls below, and sweet treats on the bottom. 

But this isn’t your nan’s spread. This is Michelin-starred Niall Keating’s spread. 

Everything feels so comprehensive. For example, each sauce is created in-house, from scratch. The brown sauce, in particular, seems like a crying shame it isn’t available for public sale.

Each item is a nod to a British ‘great’, but re-imagined in Keating’s brilliant way. The sausage roll is only a cross-section of the Wellington-sized beast we spot in the kitchen. Richly flavoured meat with a pastry no less than golden. This is the ratio of meat to pastry I think we all deserve.

On the same tier is the stunning prawn marie-rose, tucked into a milk brioche roll. It hits on every level. Taste, texture, and taste again. It’s not often you get the luxury of prawn on such high-quality bread, but it’s irreplicable. The sauce is so well balanced in fat and acid, making it one of the best things on the menu.

The final layer in the stack is an eclectic mix of trinkets that look like they might’ve wandered out from Willy Wonka’s factory. Possibly the most charming of the collection is the golden chocolate octagon, embossed with Tender’s iconic lower-case t. Keating explains it’s their adaptation of a Jaffa Cake: rich sponge, melty chocolate, and a tart but subtle kind of orange confit. Now this is showing off.

Tender’s Afternoon Tea is an experience, first and foremost. It so obviously has hours dedicated to it – an amount of time which I imagined we devoured everything far quicker than. It’s grandeur, dedication, tenacity, but a lovely afternoon out for us.