I had my birthday recently and thought it would be good to celebrate with afternoon tea at the Courtyard! I’ve been wanting to go there for a while, but it’s pretty pricey ($45++ per person) so I needed a good reason – and what better reason than my birthday?
The Courtyard is located at The Fullerton Hotel. I pretty much remember it as the former post office (more from people telling me so than actually being there when it was a post office), but a quick look at its Wikipedia page shows that it has a lot more history to it.
The Courtyard is located inside the Fullerton hotel and is divided into two sections. One section is reserved for afternoon tea. We arrived a few minutes before 3 (when tea starts on a weekday) and it was very empty.
The menu:
Descriptions of some of the teas:
Most of the teas are from TWG, so there’s a bigger emphasis, I feel, on black teas. I saw only one oolong and one pu-er but to be fair, I don’t really see Chinese teas appearing at afternoon teas. Plus, I don’t think the list in the menu is exhaustive – I forgot that Darjeeling wasn’t on the menu when I asked for my second pot but they brought it to me anyway.
Scones were served first! The good thing is that they were served with clotted cream. The weird thing is that the texture was a little off. I found them to be very chewy, almost doughy. Not to say they were undercooked, but there was a bounce to them that I don’t normally see in scones. I normally take at least two, but one was enough for me.
On the other hand, the sweets and savouries were excellent! The savouries are actually free-flow, so when you finish what’s on the tiers, you can go and get more from the buffet tables. My personal favourites were the Smoked Salmon Mille Feuille (basically smoked salmon sandwich with smoked salmon on top) and Brie cheese with plum jelly on hazelnut cracker (the jam complemented the cheese perfectly, making it very moreish). I took several helpings of these two!
On the other hand, I thought the mini bagel with cheese and ham wasn’t as good as it could have been – there was far too much bread and it overwhelmed the ingredients.
All the sweets were fantastic and my particular favourites were the lemon tart and the salted caramel chocolate tart, both of which were very rich and the perfect size.
Apart from Darjeeling, I also had their Happy Birthday Tea (of course!). It actually reminds me a lot of the French Cake tea from Mslena. Both have a berry-ish smell and taste to it and it was pretty delicious. I suppose this is a tea that goes well with cake, rather than a tea that is supposed to taste like cake.
