Walking around the Royal Botanic Gardens, I’ve always seen and been curious about The Calyx.
A grand-standing piece, its northern orientation provides optimal light for plant growth and for a limited time, it is offering high tea.
When we went, they were having the the All About Flowers display so we had a lovely wall of colour to look at.
Unfortunately, the service wasn’t as great as the wall we were seated in front of. We had to wait an awfully long time to get seated and the waiters also didn’t pay that much attention. I know that it was busy but at least a bit of acknowledgement would have been good. Everyone there was seated for high tea but the waiter pretty much just sat us down and left without a word! Half an hour later someone came by and asked us if we were ready to order.
Anyway, when we finally got our food, they took twice as long to ask us which wine we were pairing with food with.
I’m super disappointed writing this blog post because the gardens are so lovely and so are the guys who run its social media page.
So I guess I’ll give you guys a breakdown of each tier. As you can see from the picture below, it looked lovely.
Starting from the bottom, we had three varieties of sandwiches. One was cucumber, radish and green herbs. This was definitely my fave as I love cucumber sandwiches and of course they are a must when having high tea! Another, smoked salmon, capers and endive. This one wasn’t too bad but I’m not the biggest fan of endive. The third was a roast brisket with horseradish slider. This too was delicious and so cute!
The middle tier was another three savoury pieces. One being a pork and fennel sausage roll with bush tomato relish. This was lovely but I wasn’t a fan of the relish – normal tomato sauce will do me any day! The other was a capsicum, fetta and smoked paprika tartlet which wasn’t bad either. The last, a sundried tomato, basil and mozzarella arancini – another favourite of mine!
The final tier was of course, dessert. This was made up of scones, a chocolate choux, macaroons, mini cupcakes and a chocolate, cranberry and coconut brownie. Out of these, the mini cupcake was my fave and the brownie, my least fave as it reminded me of those liquid medicines you’d have as a child!
So yes, the food itself was quite pleasing but the service off-putting. Even as we left, no one acknowledged us. Usually, wherever we go, a waiter would say “Thank you for coming” or “enjoy the rest of your day” but here, not a single word.
Anywho, cheers to the food and hopefully next time around the service will be better.
If you guys have been here, let me know if you too had a bad experience or if they were just having an off day.
xX Frankiie
Frankiies Hungry Tummy 