Last year, I decided that it would be fun to celebrate my birthday by having afternoon tea at The Courtyard. I really enjoyed that, so I figured it would be fun to try and make it a tradition. Hence, last Saturday’s afternoon tea at Renku.

We hurried the afternoon tea a little because I wanted to try the Wonderland tea before it ended. The Wonderland tea was created for the Wonderland Exhibition that just ended at the Art Science Museum (pics later).

I’ve heard lots of good things about Renku’s afternoon tea in general, so I was very excited.

As with The Courtyard, you get a free flow of tea and drinks here. But unlike Fullerton, the food is served from the moving tea tables – we decided to pick one of everything to try. We learnt from last year and made sure we were hungry for this.

The tea concept was pretty unique too. There’s a tea menu, but there’s also a tea master who can customise the tea blends (there are things like roses and pandan separate from the tea leaves) and recommend teas to you.

First up: the savouries. Surprisingly, my favourite here was the tomato burrata – and I normally don’t like raw tomatoes! But, they went very well with the basil sauce and the bread. The smoked salmon and and cucumber sandwich was pretty good too.

A little disappointingly, the brie and chicken sandwich I received was missing the brie. It’s a small oversight but not one I expected from Renku and Marina Bay Sands in general – or maybe I’m just spoilt by Japan’s attention to detail.

The first tea I tried was the Durian Lapis, a blend exclusive to Marina Bay Sands. It consists of black tea, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, freeze-dried durian. It sounds like a lot, but to be honest I tasted mostly pandan and black tea – and pandan wasn’t even listed as an ingredient! I’m not too surprised because the tea is Ette tea and they tend to have more pronounced pandan notes in their blends, but I was expecting a bit more durian. On the other hand, if you’re worried about not liking the King of Fruits but want to say that you’ve tried it, this may be the tea for you.

Here are the sweets! There were quite a lot of them – we ended up pretty stuffed after trying them all (so much for arriving hungry)

Not too sure why we have watermelon and persimmon mochi but all the mochi were pretty good. They tasted like traditional mochi. The macarons were tiny but very flavourful.

I’m pretty sure tyre tracks and wheels aren’t in Alice in Wonderland, but it was the F1 weekend so I’m guessing that’s why they were there.

The cakes! I suppose the Ladybug and Alice cake are the nods to the Wonderland tea – it’s definitely not like the advertised picture but at least it wasn’t totally without Wonderland magic.

I did not grow or shrink when I ate the Alice cake, which is somewhat disappointing. Then again, I really liked the tartness of the berries contrasted with the vanilla filling in the cake so the cake is a winner for me. The berry tart was praised by everyone, even those who don’t like fruits, and the hazelnut mousse cake and ladybug cream puffs were also well received. The orange chocolate cake, however, was too rich for me.

I had the Marina Pearls, a blend of jasmine pearls, lily blossom, juniper berries, bergamot, and lychee, with the sweets. It’s another Marina Bay Sands exclusive blend and it was my favourite tea of the day. The bergamot isn’t really present, which is good for me because I can’t take too much bergamot. Instead, the tea is mostly a mix of jasmine with lychee, which made it a lovely floral and fruity blend. It reminds me of both Gryphon’s Pearl of the Orient and Antea Social’s Lychee Oolong.

The scones came last and were paired with orange butter, strawberry preserved, and whipped cream. I’m not too fond of these – the texture wasn’t quite right and there was a citrus note even in the plain scones. I suppose if you like citrus it’ll work but it didn’t for me.

I decided to end with a tisane – their Cranberry Sweetie. This tisane is packed with apple, sweet black berry leaves, hibiscus, orange peel, rose hip peel, and cranberries. It sounded great but it turned out to be my least favourite tea because it reminded me (and everyone else) of medicine. I’m normally the last person to think that tea tastes like medicine so this had to be pretty medicine-like to make me think of it.

Overall, I had a lovely time here. There is one last thing – last year, when the staff at Fullerton found out it was my birthday, they surprised me with a cake, the birthday song, and a card. This year, the staff at Renku were also informed about my birthday but apart from birthday wishes, there wasn’t anything extra. Again, nothing wrong with that and the staff are really very friendly and helpful, but it’s something to consider if you’re planning to bring someone here for their birthday and you want something extra for them.

Pictures of the Wonderland Exhibition

The Wonderland Exhibition is over but here are three photos:

The exhibition focuses on the ways that Alice in Wonderland has been portrayed in film. It’s not just the Disney films – it’s been adapted many times over the years (some of the early films are genuinely scary) and referenced even more in various animes, tv shows, etc.

I really liked how interactive the exhibition was. This garden is filled with faces of the visitors – you can scan your face using the guide map (which is split into two/three types, can’t remember the exact number for some reason, depending on your character) and it’ll appear as a little card.

There are tons of other interactive and surprising moments in the exhibition as well.

If you want to go for tea but don’t want to shell out for Renku, you can queue up for the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, which is basically projection mapping onto the tea table. Pretty cool, but was sadly overshadowed by the fact that I ran into two of my friends here and we spent some time catching up.

I’ve actually been planning to go for the Wonderland Exhibition since I heard of it, so I’m glad that I not only managed to catch it, but I managed to go for the tea as well! It’s a pity the tea wasn’t filled with more Wonderland magic, but I like the way the teas were presented (even if the tisane wasn’t for me) and the sweets.