~ Curious Charlie ~

Designer Teen High Tea @ The Langham Melbourne @ Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Wednesday 13th April

The Langham's had high tea for ~~women~~ ladies, kids (come in costume), and now tweens/teenage girls. Will they come up with a theme for gentlemen? With Cuban cigar wafers, after dinner mints and absolutely no pink? What do men like, and how can that be used to create a high tea set? Mini burgers (sliders) with fries? Or a 50s MadMen theme, with leather furniture, chocolate cigars and hard drinks instead of tea. I'd like that.

It was a few years ago the high tea was the thing, it started with the hotels then spread to cafes. The Langham's always been on the list, and it's the kids ones that I wanted to go to, but we decided to pick the tween one. Tweens are an emerging market, it mainly is focused on girls who are too young for boys (in theory) and too old for toys. These days kids are getting more allowances then we were, and more purchasing power. They all have smart phones, and social media. You'd think home was a safe zone from bullies, but not anymore. Moving on. Witchery and Barbot have come up with fashion for them, and they can be seen as mini adults, with a lot of them having a social presence and been influenced by well, influences. Fashion and flatlays are in, according to le beau.

Located on the other side of the Yarra where not only is the grass is greener, but there is actually grass is The Langham, a chain of five star hotels expanding across four continents. Hotels and the art/recital centers is where you'll find the best customer service and so we had high expectations.

The Foyer

The Menu

High Tea for One

Rose Floral Lemonade

I love lemonade, and the word is conjours up the best lemonade we have ever had at a wedding event (Bursaria's lemonade). As we were at the Langham I was expecting something similar to a rosewater lemonade with a spring of mint or wedge of lemon with pink sugar on the edge, perched on the glass. Nope. This one was Schweppes, with flowers on top though not infused in the drink. With the note that this high tea is designed for 13-19 year olds, their needs and wants would be different to a 24yr old sugar addict lifestyle blogger.

Pure Darjeeling

Muscatel aroma with varied hints from cinnamon to ginger, cardamon to grapefruit.

While jas loves tea, I'm more of a hot chocolate person, though I do like iced fruity teas which isn't considered a real tea, and milk tea. I may have added too much milk and sugar, for this selection leaned towards milk tea.

Smoked salmon, cucumber and horseradish crème fraiche

Free range chicken with chives and lemon thyme sandwich

Working from the bottom to the top tier we started with ribbon sandwiches, with light rye bread, my favourite. While there were four selections we only had two due to food allergies.

Scones served with clotted cream and jam & mac and cheese croquettes

The scones were perfect though the butter was hard, as it had just come out of the fridge. Deep fried croquettes were great, as anything deep fried is, though we felt that it needed a dip of some sort.

Dessert! The sweets were tailored for tweens and very different from
the typical spread of petite fours, tarts, dessert tubes. Instead there were...

Gold-dusted donuts, XO sugar cookies, chocolate dipped rose meringues,

chewy macaroons, and a mousse-filled, chocolate-dipped waffle cone.

XO cookies - Butter cookies are always good, as they melt on your tongue and are made up of the best ingredients: butter and sugar. While these tasted very good they didn't look the same standard as in the promo pictures. It reminded me of McDonalds, in that the one on the promo picture looks perfect, but the one you actually get isn't the same. That was disappointing.

I wasn't really a fan of any of the other desserts, the macaron was chewy, the rose meringues didn't taste like rosewater. Cinnamon donut with a chocolate dip and gold dust, while it looked lovely it didn't taste as good. And the chocolate mousse waffle cone had us asking why? A mini version would have been cuter, or I'd replace this with dessert tubes.

We had a good time, everything smelt great and the service was excellent. Though the food was a bit average. Not sure if it was because it was designed for tweens therefore needed to be visually appealing only, but not taste as good, as they wouldn't know? Was it because we booked the tea that looked pretty but was more novelty, rather than the normal high tea? We'd like to assume so. If you book the mother's day high tea or B&P Edition I'm sure it'll be much better.

Meanwhile the service was great! Everyone was very friendly and checked on us every so often, but not too often, to see if we needed more tea/water. I do find that the friendliest people in service are at hotels and at the arts/recital center.

Have you been to high tea at the Langham? Where is the best high tea you've had? Our best is the Providence Cafe, at $40 not only is it the cheapest, it is also the best value for money and everything was delicious! How do we know? We went twice!

We've also been to...

The Hilton - The worst, there was sushi but no soy sauce? $60. 1/5
The Bridal Showcase - Unknown Caterer. Great. 4.5/5
A Crafternoon Tea - Pretty awesome! And not ran by a hotel or cafe. $80. 4/5
Windsor - We did the buffet, very good but the most expensive. $70. 4.5/5
Rendezvous Hotel - Tarts, Sandwiches, Cupcakes. Average, but very friendly. 3/5
Angliss - Budget friendly but not really high tea desserts 3/5.