I enjoyed the experience and I have a bit of a sweet tooth. So I love desserts and maybe small snacks like mini sandwiches, pastries etc. I just love the whole idea where a bunch of girls sitting gossiping and enjoying a cup of tea with snacks on the side. Makes you feel like a true blue-blood royal (not that I am anywhere close to that). The "high tea" term has somehow made its way all over the world now. Even in Southeast Asian countries, everyone just casually posts on their social media statuses "High tea with so and so at bla bla bla". Many cafés are also attracted to the idea of serving "high tea" usually between 3 pm to 5 pm as that is the "ideal" time for having an afternoon tea with close friends.
There's only one reason why I rarely go for high tea in Australia. Mainly because the cost is not worth it unless you are an extremely huge fan of gobbling down 10 macaroons, dozens of cakes, pastries etc.
It's not cheap to have a good session of high tea with your friends. At some places, it will cost a handsome $69 per head and I am yet to try that one when I get a chance or when I get to convince my binging buddies to go with me and be fat together.
I am lucky enough to receive a crown gift card from my colleagues as my birthday gift so I decided to use it for high tea in Conservatory, Crown, Southbank. It usually costs $50 per head and if you want to add unlimited champagne, it costs $75 per head. Good news is, it is a buffet style so if you decide to go, try to make use of the value and devour all the sweets as much as you can!!
I love the set up in Conservatory inside out. Everytime I visit Crown, I would go and check this place out because it just looks so elegant and the colour scheme is mainly dominated by white so it feels like you're in a wedding or you would want your wedding set up to look like what Conservatory looks like. I've been telling so many people I wanted to visit this restaurant and voila! I got what I wished for!!
Does it not attract you to be like "Come in~~~ Come in~~~~ "
We were greeted professionally by well groomed staff and one of them escorted us to our seatings. Oh did I forget to mention that you have to book it in advance before you go there and to also advise them of your dietary preferences. (i. e. If you are lactose, gluten, wheat intolerance or whatever else you're allergic to).
Tea or coffee will usually be offered to you as soon as you are all seated and ready to rush to the buffet area.
I was behaving very well as to not act like people who have never visited a buffet restaurant before and take 10 plates at a time. No, that's not the strategy. The strategy is not to overestimate how much you can eat and to sample different types of food in a small amount at a time.
A glimpse of how the interior looks like from where I was seating.
A glimpse of how the interior looks like from where I was seating.
Although these photos were taken using my humble iPhone5, I hope they are not too disappointing for you guys. I think my humble iPhone5 has done a decent job in capturing the colour scheme inside Conservatory. I love the high ceiling design and the colour. How I wish I could have white colour interior for my future house as well but I know I am not an OCD-ly tidy person (Yes, I just let out my biggest shame publicly). So I know I won't be able to maintain the colour in the long run. I can imagine the cost of maintaining interior like this will pretty much bleed my saving so let's save it when I'm a millionaire in a million years (You never know!).
Even the seats are créme-coloured. It made me nervous just sitting down drinking my tea/coffee and eating my cakes just in case if I spilled anything. Luckily I didn't! Imagine as well if you come here with your infants/toddlers. OMG make sure they don't spill anything onto the chair! Not that it will be embarrassing or anything but man, I would feel sad for the chairs. I can imagine the staff there have to make sure the furnitures are cleaned immaculately at all times.
There are a lot of patrons who were there for special occasions such as birthdays, corporate functions, etc. Not many people with very young children, mostly teens, mostly posh looking patrons who just finished shopping at Crown. For those who don't know, Crown houses many luxury brands, such as Louis Vuitton, Prada, Bvlgari, Burberry, Versace etc just to name a few. So people who shop there are not your average people. Hence, the hefty cost for having a session of high tea here. In fact, many restaurants here in Crown are top notch fine dining restaurants such as Rockpool bar & grill which I had the opportunity to visit the other week before this post.
The first thing I saw on my left when I started walking to the buffet was a selection of adorable looking cakes!!!!!!!!! OMG, I felt like I was in heaven. Heaven of bad sugar but I simply couldn't care less!!
Just look at those attractive colours!! I felt simply......................... ALIVE!
I sadly didn't try every single one though because I just couldn't find a way to fit everything without having to throw up in the toilet then come back. <----------- didn="" do="" i="" it.="" nbsp="" p="" t="">
I must say though and I have to be honest as I am writing a post on this without being paid for it just because I want to share my experience with others. So, I MUST be honest, the green one which I believe to be pistachio mini cake, disappointed me a little bit simply because it was a tad too dry and the flavour just didn't go well altogether. HOWEVER, maybe because my taste buds were clouded by too much sweetness from the rest of the stuff that trying on pistachio flavour just didn't work out too well. What I'm saying is, other people might find it tastier than me.
The chocolate mousse cake was quite rich so anyone who loves rich cakes must try it. Something that I didn't take a picture of, which was just located next to these selection of cakes was ice cream! They came in two flavours, one was dark chocolate which tasted so amazing for me. Love dark chocolate and definitely can live with dark chocolate everyday. The other one was raspberry flavoured sorbet which was my least favourite. First of all, I think because it is a sorbet, it melts very easily combined with hundreds of people opening and closing the lid, scooping and placing back the scooper in hot water (to rinse the flavour so other people can use the scooper again), all these activities interfere with the ice cream container's ability to preserve the coolness of the sorbet. Therefore when you scoop your sorbet, all you get is a scoop of halfway melting sorbet which is just not a very nice experience when you're in a 5-star-looking restaurant. I do understand that they do this for hygienic purposes but they probably should come up with something else to resolve this issue. Maybe even replacing the sorbet with a gelato style ice cream instead as the dark chocolate one didn't show any sign of melting at all.
This section serves some "pastries" selection. I took this picture because the stack of raisin buns look nice.. no? Anyways, the ones on the top left hand side are duck wraps. They tasted quite nice actually. I didn't expect to see duck wraps whilst having an afternoon tea? It was a pleasant surprise nonetheless.
The dumplings were also quite nice. After overloading my tastebuds with sweetness, I needed some saltiness to balance it out. Anyone else agrees with me?
I didn't try the buns because, ..................... they are just raisin buns. I could expect how they were gonna taste like. If for some reason, somebody tells me they are one of THE best buns available in town, I am willing to fork out another $50 to go back there just to try the buns. Well, maybe I am exaggerating a little bit but you get my point.
They also serve some party pies and again, I didn't try the pies because of the same reason above.
I didn't want to get full easily and fill up my stomach with food I can easily access anywhere else. You may argue the same applicable for cakes. Cakes for me, are resulted from individual crafting and require immaculate skills. Same goes with pies BUT, my belief is, if you are looking for the best pie in town, then this is not the right place for you. You must find a place specifically serves one of the best pies, such as the café I visited in Queenscliff or Pie in the Sky in Dandenong ranges (which both I have covered in my past posts).
On this corner, they serve fruit mixes such as pineapples, oranges & strawberries. There are also grapes on the other corner, picture will come through separately. Look what I also found... Just next to the strawberries are marshmallows!! MARSH - Freaking - MALLOWS~~~~~~ Oh My God, could it get better than that???? And what do we do with the marshmallows? Look next to it, a freaking chocolate fountain flowing life right in front of you! You may choose to dip the fruits with two options, milk chocolate or white chocolate just on the other side of milk chocolate. They were super delicious!
I was so tempted to just stand in front of the fountain and just drink the whole thing but of course I refrained myself from doing so. Save the embarrassment.
There you go, my abovementioned grapes picture. Just why the grapes are on the other corner next to the cheese & crackers platter and not with the rest of the fruits continues to perplex me until today.
Maybe for the sake of food decoration. I'm not the expert in how to display food to attract people so I'm not making any comment on this. Anyhow, it looks pretty sitting next to dried fruits & dried bananas.
Ta - dah~~~~~~~ Cheese platter!!!! Um ok, so there's no name as to which cheese is what cheese. I'm again, not a cheese expert. In fact, I just know cheddar, tasty, goat, blue & mozzarella cheese. I have no idea what those are in the picture. I just tried each one of them and one of them tasted horrendous. It had such a strong odour too and I can't remember which one now but it just put me off straight away and I couldn't get rid of the taste behind my throat even after drinking a gallon of water & tea. It tasted foul.. not the kind where it tasted like rotten cheese just tasted like you have chewed on dusty wood. Ok, maybe not quite. Anyways, it was simply foul tasting.
Back to pleasant looking & tasting cakes. The chocolate mud cake was extremely rich as expected from a chocolate mud cake. I couldn't finish it halfway through. So was the cheesecake. Very rich and creamy too although it tasted amazing but I the repeating rich texture over and over again in my mouth that I felt a bit sick afterwards. There's only so much of sweet stuff you can swallow. I couldn't bring myself to try the carrot cake because I am actually not much of a carrot cake fan. I tried many times in the past but I just never develop a liking to it. For me, I don't mind it but if I was asked to choose, I wouldn't go for it. Ironically, carrot cakes are probably a healthier option compared to the rest of the selection out there.
In the display jars are some macaroons and some selections of marzipan. I didn't try them too because by then I was so full that I had to consider skipping dinner which I did :(
I know I probably didn't take many photos that I should of but sometimes when I was taking photos while people queuing to get access to the food behind me, I felt embarrassed because it was as if I was blocking them and in their mind, I was probably some typical Asian with their food-photo-taking obsession and sometimes I just don't want to be "that girl" (
It was overall, an amazing experience and I would like to thank my kind colleagues who have given me one of the best birthday gifts I received this year and I am very thankful to be surrounded by great people who have shared very positive influence in my life while I'm abroad.
Thanks to Conservatory who has provided an excellent service with their friendly wait staff continuously checking on patrons to ensure everyone was taken care of and enjoyed a relaxing time with their loved ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment