High Tea at Brasserie Les Saveurs, St Regis Singapore.

👍 Amazing ambience, nice selection of teas, buffet spread to fill up large tummies.
👎 A little pricey for smaller appetites; local flavour scones were interesting but a bit dry.

Brasserie Les Saveurs is the French, all-day-dining restaurant of the St Regis Singapore. Between lunch and dinner services the restaurant pushes out Afternoon Tea: Your choice of TWG teas (including a blend specifically created for the St Regis chain), scones, sandwiches and pastries served on a three-tiered silver stand, waffles and crepes prepared a la minute, and a mini buffet spread to fill up any stomach space you have left.

Thanks to a wide range of credit card / dining card discounts available, per-pax nett prices are s$48 (weekdays) or s$52 (weekends). Let's find out if the experience is worth the money!


Brasserie Les Savuers' ambience is, of course, amazing. It's classy, it's comfortable, the air conditioning is great, and the live pianist almost never takes a break. Chairs are comfy, too, making the dining room a perfect place to catch up and chit chat for two hours over scones and coffee.


The buffet spread itself, isn't really all that great. There's a half-dozen (or so) cold items like Alaskan crab salad and an assortment of cold cuts, and an assortment of different bread. There's also a waffle and crepe station (not pictured).


Over on the desserts section, a chocolate fountain takes center stage, accompanied by a few cakes and pastries, some fruits, and 4 ice cream flavours.


Finally - there's a small cheese cart with some common cheeses (and their accompaniments).


Overall, the buffet spread won't win any "best buffet" awards, but the focus really is on the afternoon tea spread. We really dig the shiny silver three-tiered stand (and teapot). Starting from the bottom, the sandwiches were okay, the scones were a bit dry (and we didn't really appreciate the pandan and salted egg ones), but the desserts were pretty good.

Speaking of that silver teapot, there's a wide range of TWG teas, but they're not free flow: You only pick one tea, and the waiters come round with refills of hot water.


Our final verdict, then? Considering the buffet spread, waffles & crepes station, and cheese cart, the pricing actually is pretty reasonable. For comparison, TWG's Parisian Tea Set is s$40 nett without any of these 'extras,' and in our opinion is far less attractive place to eat.

Taste-wise the food isn't the greatest, but in our opinions the ambience more than makes up for it; and this might be our default afternoon tea spot for now whenever we're in the mood to splurge a little!

Tea Tasting/Pairing at the Marmalade Pantry with Dr Leslie Tay.

After water, tea is the most widely drunk beverage in the entire world - more than 5 million tonnes of the dried leaves are produced annually. It's good for you, too - it's chock full of antioxidants, flavanols, flavonoids, and polyphenols. So when Dr. Leslie Tay of ieatishootipost organized a high tea tasting / pairing over at The Marmalade Pantry, the darling and I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about this leaf!


The afternoon was structured like how a wine-tasting/pairing session would be like - four different teas, paired with four different food portions, designed to complement and bring out the flavors in each other. We're concentrating today on Dilmah's Watte Single Region Teas, which are the same tea plant grown in four different altitudes/climates.


The darling and I know nothing about tea, so it's great that Dr. Leslie is on hand with his projector to moderate and guide us through the pairing session. Different teas have different strengths and character, and generally speaking a light tea would go well with a light tasting meal, whereas heavy, sweet desserts would need a heavier-tasting tea to wash it down with. We're also supposed to look out for three 'categories' - taste, texture, and components (how well the tea and the food complement each other).


We also were lucky to have Dilhan, son of Dilmah Founder Merrill Fernando, who took the microphone quite a number of times during the session to impart some of his tea knowledge! We learn that how 'strong' a tea is depends a lot on the sunshine, temperature and humidity that the plant is exposed to - which is why the different Watte teas taste so much different despite being the same plant grown in the same region.


We start off with plants growing at 5,500-6,500 feet (above sea level) with the Ran Watte. It is a very light tea, slightly dry, with a slight hint of herbal/floral sweetness.


It's paired with Citrus cured salmon with tea smoked cream cheese on brown toast, and we're surprised that the tea did enhance and bring out the flavors!


Moving down the hills, we proceed to the Uda Watte (5000ft). At these elevations the richer soil and more exposure to sunlight result in a stronger, earthier taste, and is more suitable than the Ran Watte for adding milk. This was paired with Pork belly pot stickers with XO sauce - this was my favorite nibble of the day.


Incidentally speaking, the ideal way to have your milk tea is to add the tea to the milk, instead of the other way around. This apparently allows the milk to gradually warm up, and prevents the breaking down of the milk proteins.

Next up, we pair Cocoa ribs with garlic confit and steamed buns with the 3000ft Meda Watte. This tea is even stronger, being probably a little stronger-bodied than the "everyday" tea bags that we brew. The darling makes a remark that the taste is quite similar to the Chinese Pu Erh tea.


The final pairing is the Oyster po boys with celeriac slaw, broiche buns, with the sea-level Yatta Watte. We've been having our teas sans any sugar or milk to fully enjoy and appreciate the differences of each tea, but this cup is too earthy and strong for me.


As a special 'bonus' tasting, we also get to sample Dilmah's very luxurious Uva Highlands Seasonal Flush (2011). The abridged version of what makes this tea so special is that the winds, weather, sunshine and rains came together perfectly in this region. On 9th August 2011, only 500kg in total of tea leaves were harvested. We thought that this tea was the best of the five we had today - very flavorful without much bitterness from the tannins. Had a wonderful aroma, too!


Each of us got to go home with a goody bag of some of Dilmah's more mainstream offerings :P


While we're in no way tea connoisseurs, I think that the session has managed to up our appreciation of the beverage quite a few notches. At the very least, we now know that there are quite a few varieties of black tea that can be comfortably slurped without sugar and milk overpowering all the aromas and rich textures!

Thanks to Dr Leslie for organizing the event and being and awesome host, and the Marmalade Pantry at the Stables for the lovely nibbles. Totally worth the $30 that we paid.

High Society High Tea - T Forty Two cafe (by Ms Read Boutique), Empire Shopping Gallery

High Society. The group that the socialites and the upper class belong to, and the lifestyles of which the rest of us can only imagine. Well, perhaps the closest experience us plebs can get is to head on down to the Empire Shopping Gallery in Subang, where boutique Ms Read has opened a cafe of sorts named T Forty Two.


As you can see, everything is immaculately decorated. There's crystal everywhere, designer chairs, and the tables have a mirror surface!


Although there's a selection of pasta's and sandwiches on the menu, it's clear that they cater more for snacks, cakes and tea (or coffee, if that floats your boat). There's a delectable selection of different cakes and pastries on display on the serving tables:




Enough about the decoration, though. The darling and I decide to share the High Tea for Two, which costs MYR49.90++ and is only available from 3pm-6pm (if memory serves correctly). While waiting for the food to be prepared we're served with some honey'ed almonds, which were pretty delicious!


The High Tea set comes with two choices of coffee or tea. There are quite a number of exotic blends, but me being in a not-so-adventurous mood, decide on cappucino. It comes in a designer cup-and-saucer, and even the sugar is served in a delectable little pewter container. Although the coffee was delicious, one huge complaint is that because the cup is very thin, it doesn't hold much heat and so my cappucino was cold less than halfway through the high-tea.


The darling's Orange Tangerine Tea doesn't have that problem, though, because the tea is kept warm by a proper teapot.


As for the food for the High-Tea, we're served with a 'sampler' of finger sandwiches (salmon and egg salad), hot scones with cream and jam, two sweet mini cakes to which I've forgotten the name, mango macarons, chocolate balls and a choice of cake - for us, we chose the chocolate cake.


So if you're ever in a pretentious mood and hankering for sipping some tea from some fine china with your pinky upturned, head on over to T Forty Two in the Empire Shopping Gallery and sample their High-Tea. And please, no more taxes :(