High Tea at Intercontinental - Sydney

Just taking a bit of a break from the recent American posts...

For one of my friend's Hen's, she opted for a high tea at Intercontinental Hotel. It wasn't at the Cortile lounge... it was upstairs. But I think the food should be the same as downstairs. For $50 a head including a glass of champagne, I was flabergasted by the amount of food we each got.

Sitting down, we were met with these four little pots. The cream and the jam was obviously for scones. But the chocolate sauce and maple syrup? I was pleasantly informed by my friend that they will be for waffles and crepes which will come in addition to the massive tier of stuff we will get.

cream and jam, chocolate sauce and maple syrup

One massive tier was to be shared amongst 4 people. There were like 8-10 scones on the top level. On the 2nd level, there were 3 types of sandwiches (egg and cucumber, sundried tomatos, and ham and cheese), mini meat pies, and mini quiches. The bottom tier was where the sweets lay - passionfruit cheesecake, opera cake, macaroons (different tiers had different flavours - mine was pistaccio), cream cornettos, and toffee nut tartlets.

WOW. Epic. We probably finished 3 of the massive pile of scones between the 4 of us. They were apparently really really good (I'm not a scone person and I wanted to save my stomach for the rest of the goodies and hence, didn't have one). Of the sandwiches, the egg and cucumber one was the yummiest. Meat pies and quiches were unfortunately, very average. The bottom layer... delicious! I loved the opera cake - smooth, rice, chocolatey and creamy. The nut tartlets were also tasty and crunchy, sweet yet not overlly so. It was the macaroons which took me by surprise. They were slightly massive ... and at first, due to the psychedelic green colour, my friends were puzzled by what flavour it was. But after tasting it, the unmistable pistaccio nutty flavour was unmissable.

high tea 3-tiered stand

In the midst of chomping through the tiers, icecream balls, belgium waffles and crepes arrived to the table. I only had the belgium waffle as I simply couldn't fit both in. The waffle was slightly cold by the time I got to it, but when combined with the icecream and the chocolate sauce, it wasn't half bad :)

waffles with ice-cream and chocolate sauce

All up, for $50, the amount of food we got was pretty good. Everything was quite delectable, and left all of us being stuffed + more. Only thing is, the waiters were slightly not very approachable and continuously tried to kick us out at around 5ish.

Ratings:
Food - 7/10
Service - 6/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 8/10
Overall - 28/40

Intercontinental Hotel
Corner Phillip & Bridge Sts
117 Macquarie Street,
Sydney
NSW 2000
Tel: (02) 9240 1396