Introduction

On my last day in Australia I’m doing three things. First is one last stroll around Sydney. Second is afternoon tea at Capella. And third is Puccini’s La Bohème at the Sydney Opera House. And it looks as though Sydney will be giving me a gorgeous send off – with beautifully mild weather.

I’m rather curious about the afternoon tea at the Capella Hotel. The room prices are outrageously high, and frankly, I’m not quite sure if they’re justified. So, for future reference, I thought I’d try the afternoon tea first.

Location

The Capella Hotel is housed in an old building in the centre of Sydney’s CBD in what used to be the Department of Agriculture. What’s a bit strange is that the bulding is still marked outside as the Department of Agriculture. Nowhere on the outside does it actually say Capella.

The afternoon tea is served in the lobby lounge, which is already busy when I arrive for my 15h00 reservation. The lobby lounge is rather dark and drab. At least there are a few bright lights on the ceiling that are intended to trick the plants on the living walls that they’re in bright sunlight. But it’s still quite dark. Hanging from the ceiling are also a few regular lamps with lamp shades that rhythmically open and close like the petals on a floofy flower. It’s a bit gimmicky, but why not.

Preliminaries

The table is set for two. They have lovely, delicate chinaware with a floral pattern. The menu for the afternoon tea is also already at the table. What I find interesting, is that they have printed the pescatarian menu, which I’ve ordered. Very often, hotels will give you the regular menu and just assure you that they’ll be replacing the meat dishes with something else. The selection of teas is printed on the back page, and it’s a interesting assortment of teas they have here.

The Service

The service is impeccable – quick, friendly, and attentive. The staff give us a few minutes to peruse the tea list before they come to take the order. They point out several times that we can change teas or even *clutching my imaginary pearl necklace* get a coffee. They also proactively inquire about drinks and check that we’re perfectly hydrated throughout our stay.

The Tea Selection

The tea is definitely the showstopper of the afternoon tea experience at the Capella Hotel, for two reasons. The first is that it’s good quality tea with an interesting and subtle hint of tangarine along with the bergamot. The second reason that the tea has been expertly brewed and the tea leaves removed to prevent it from turning bitter. This is one heck of a cup of tea! Well done. So many places inadvertently ruin tea because they don’t really know what they’re doing.

The Caviar Service

For an additional AUD65, you can have a caviar service with all the trimmings ahead of the afternoon tea, and that’s what we decide to do. The caviar is served on ice, together with chives, crème fraîche, onion, egg yolk and separate egg white. The blinis and a mother of pearl spoon are brought out on a separate plate.

The Afternoon Tea

The savouries and sweets are brought out together on a two tier étagère with the sweets on the top tier. In the sum of all things, the savouries are not bad. Mainly, that’s because they all taste very similar and because they’re all a bit too heavy on the mayonnaise.

In contrast, the sweets are a lot nicer, with more diverse and delicate flavours. I also appreciate that there are as many sweets as there are savouries. If there are too many sweets, the whole afternoon tea risks becoming too rich.

The scones are served at the end of the meal, after the sweets, which is how the afternoon tea in Madrid was served. They are served warm with whipped cream and fruit of the forest jam. They’re rather nice.

Conclusion

On the very, very positive side, the staff at the Capella were just great and offered a professional and swift service. Requests were answered to straight away and they kept checking that everything was okay. And the tea was just spiffing, really good stuff and expertly brewed to perfection.

While I don’t really have anything that is clearly negative to say, I do think that the lounge in which we had the afternoon tea really was rather ugly and quite dark. As for the food, the scones were great, the sweets were nice but nothing more, and two of the savouries were drowned unnecessarily in too much mayonnaise. The caviar service was nicely done, though.