FoodieChat

Bathers’ Pavillion, Balmoral, is well known for its brunches in the cafe, and also the fine dining restaurant, both sharing an uninterrupted view of Balmoral Beach as you dine.  But did you know that it also offers the best value high tea in Sydney?  It is just $50 for two people, and really does make you think why other Sydney hotels charge so much for around the same thing, minus the view!  Bathers’ Pavillion takes a more casual approach, no stuffy waiters and elegant china here!  This is very well suited to its large proportion of families that come her also much more affordable at $25 instead of $50+ per person.  The napkins are brightly coloured, and suit the seaside type of interiors inside.

Also unlike other stuffy high teas in Sydney, Bathers does NOT put everyone’s food onto the one tea stand in an attempt to make it not look stingy! Bathers puts two persons food on the one stand, no need to make it look good value because it already is!

Many people eat savoury sweet sweet, but for me, I start with hot then move to savoury then to sweet.  First up, scones!  One each, still warm, and of a good size, served with whipped cream and strawberry jam.  High tea purists might argue that clotted cream or double cream should be served.  But I prefer my cream with as little saturated fat as possible, it makes it much less heavy.

The sweets of the day were a bread and butter pudding slice, a hazelnut chocolate mousse layered slice, and a passionfruit meringue.  These were all lovely, but probably not up to 5 star hotel standards.  The bread and butter pudding could have been warm for my liking; and the chocolate on the layered slice wasn’t quite tempered, but the gold leaf was a very elegant touch.  The mousse could also be a bit firmer to make the chocolate thing easier to eat, as it squished when you used your fork to eat it.  I liked the taste of the mousse though, as well as the passionfruit tart.  But I was a bit sad that I think the meringue wasn’t evenly torched, and I don’t think it was done the cooked way (ie to add hot sugar syrup into the egg white).

The savouries were a delightful change on traditional crust off sandwiches! We each got a shitake mushroom bun (chinese style), a mushroom tart and a smoked salmon finger sandwich.  The shitake mushroom bun wasn’t quite up to chinese standard, especially since it was cold, as the bun was a bit gluggy, when it should be fluffy and warm.  The filling had a delicious earthy flavour though.  The tarts were absolutely perfect, bite sized and full of flavour.  And finally, the smoked salmon finger sandwich on rye with creme fraiche was as good as the best I’ve had.

Your $25 also includes any coffee including cappucinos, mochas etc, and also a pot of tea. All in all, amazing value.  All so good that in fact I forgot to take pictures of the view! hehe. Oh well.  If you can get here, do try it.  It’s something different from other high teas.  The only problem though is that there are no bookings, and it’s only on Mondays to Fridays.  Don’t let that stop you though!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 7th, 2010 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Cafe Food, Sydney Dining ('burbs), Tea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.