In my Sunday best
I am not alien to high tea. If you have been following my blog for two years, you would have realized how much I adore high tea. I love high tea because it is the perfect excuse to bond with people you have not met for a very long time. With tea and coffee, every bit of the conversation seems to flow into one perfect stream of shared consciousness. Not to forget, the bite sized goodies that comes together does add to the excitement only known to those who are in the tea party. :)
Of jam and sugar-coated sticks to be stirred with coffee ( methinks this is ingenious )
Knowing that I enjoy high tea, my mother recommended me to try the high tea offered by the Lobby Lounge of Shangri-La, KL. She even showed me some of the pictures of her high tea experience and to be honest, they immediately captured my interest at the first sight. It is easy to understand why as one proceed with this post.
Malaysian-Indonesian styled high tea - RM45.
We ordered one Malaysian-Indonesia styled high tea and one standard English high tea. The Malaysian styled high tea comes with Malaysian and Indonesian delicacies, both sweet and savoury. For the savoury there are satay , spring rolls, murtabak with anchovies and puff pastry with dried sambal filling .
English styled high tea - RM 45
The one that I enjoyed the most among in the savoury department was the satay. It is chargrilled to perfection and came with an irresistible peanut gravy. The rest were not bad although I wished that the air-conditioner would not cool them so quickly.
Sandwiches fit for a lady
For sweets, there are two types of scones (bready and crumbly) that comes with jam and mascarpone cheese, a very rich chocolate marble cake, banana cake, screwpine or pandan cake, goreng pisang (friend bananas), kolak , lapis legit , kuih talam , kuih lapis and two varieties of fruit tart (chocolate pear and raspberries - these were not Malaysian or Indonesian!).
Lightly battered Goreng Pisang
The best thing about the desserts was that none were too sweet for my disliking. Plus, they were easy to cut and can be shared among the party of four. The butter cake was the loveliest among the lot. Its richness makes it simply divine with coffee. However, I found the scones a little disappointing because it came with mascarpone cream instead of the standard Devonshire clotted cream and they arrived too late! We were all done with the scones and then, the cream appeared. :(
Chocolate pear tart
The English styled high tea has similar components with the Malaysian-Indonesian styled high tea, except that the savouries consisted of different types of sandwiches and the sweets were of course, Western. There were pannacotta, cupcake and eclairs.
Kolak
I thought that the English styled high tea paled in comparison to the Malaysian-Indonesian styled high tea in the sweets department. Perhaps, I was so used to having eclairs-fruit tart-cake when I was in Melbourne that the Malaysian-Indonesian kuihs were more appealing.
Coffee anyone?
Each set comes with either coffee or tea of your choice. I opted for latte and my sister ordered lemongrass tea. The coffee was smooth and silky, the tea relaxing. To add to the enjoyment, there was live harp music. The first song they played was my favorite 水调歌头/但願人長久. :)
What was most surprising was that in a country where high tea is seen as secondary compared to places like Melbourne, the high tea experience that I have in Shangri-La is better than the ones I had in Melbourne. High tea in Melbourne is characterized by a strong emphasis on the scones and over-excessive sweetness for its desserts. While the former impresses me, the latter does not. Still, I feel that it depends on what one wants from a high tea. I rather choose something that is a satisfying all-rounder.
Little things:
-Portions: One tea tray must be shared between two.
-Price: Very reasonable considering the quality of food, the ambience and not to mention, the live harp music. :)
-Service: Very warm
-Budget: Rm 90 ++
-Non-halal. Not sure if there are gluten-free versions of it.
-Webpage (Click here )
-Location:
11 Jalan Sultan Ismail
50250 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
T: (60 3) 2032 2388
F: (60 3) 2070 1514
My previous high tea experiences:
Radii @ Part Hyatt, Melbourne CBD
Westin Melbourne
Windsor Hotel, Melbourne CBD
