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Review: Just Tickled Pink, Hyde Park, Adelaide

April 11, 2012 by · 11 Comments

Just Tickled Pink
08 8271 6370
Unley Road
274 Unley Rd
Hyde Park, SA 5061
Just Tickled Pink Online

I first heard of Just Tickled Pink from Faye Lu. She posted about it and I was instantly intrigued. So I decided I just had to go there. My first visit to Just Tickled Pink was with Kim for her birthday and I instantly fell in love. Couldn’t wait to go again, this time with a larger group so I proposed that #ABBM’s first birthday to be held there. Hooray!

** #ABBM is short for Adelaide Beauty Bloggers Meetup – really, just an excuse for us Adelaide beauty bloggers to meetup and have fun!

The place is pink. There is no denying that. The walls are pink, the chairs are pink, the counter is pink.. everything is pink! Definitely if pink was your utmost favourite colour, you’d be right at home here. It’s hard not to feel girly in this little cafe. Definitely perfect for a lolita outing as well. Maybe when the #sparklies come over!

The walls are a shrine for Audrey Hepburn. I adore Audrey Hepburn with her ridiculously elegant looks and beautiful manners. If you haven’t watch any of her shows, you should! She’s a gem.

The menu changes from time to time. You don’t really know what you will be getting. It’s $40 per head for high tea and it comes with an assortment of savouries and sweets. This particular afternoon, we were started off with a quiche topped with some salmon and sour cream. Tasty but the quiche was rather eggy. Every table starts off with a champagne flute filled with red cordial and some berries. Food is then served and it is only after every table in the establishment has been served with food that they come around with tea. Just Tickled Pink offers their own blend of black tea that they claim to go perfectly with the food they serve. I won’t argue – it was good tea.

I find that tiered stands of sandwiches and sweets always seem to impress people, for some reason. The taller/larger the stand, the bigger the wow factor. This was no exception. With us being a group of 10, we received multiple stands of sandwiches and sweets to choruses of oohs and aahs from the girls. The lower tier features an assortment of sandwiches while the upper tier is for sweets that range from mini cupcakes to scones with jam and butter. Yum!

I adore the attention to detail and I love how they cut out the sandwiches into little shapes. While it’s still a sandwich, just a simple using of a cookie cutter has upped its wow factor by three times. Easy.

I must also point out that the cucumber sandwiches at Just Tickled Pink are like crack. While the other sandwiches are rather normal and nothing exciting, the cucumber sandwiches and light, refreshing and incredibly moreish. I made a clean sweep of those cucumber sandwiches, I dare say.

A closer look at the sweets tier. There are melting moments, chocolate, cupcakes… which are all quite nice but nothing to write home about. I do adore the bite sized scones however, and devoured quite a few. Ahem.

I do believe that an afternoon out at Just Tickled Pink is an experience. You do not visit purely for the food, rather you visit for the atmosphere, the girly excitement, the thrills of tiered desserts and gorgeous tea. Company is key and both my visits have been stellar, made all the better by the company.

Just Tickled Pink on Urbanspoon

Filed Under: Adelaide, High Tea, Hyde Park, Things to do in Adelaide Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
Review: Windsor High Tea @ Melbourne CBD, Australia

Review: Windsor High Tea @ Melbourne CBD, Australia

March 30, 2011 by · 7 Comments

The Hotel Windsor
111 Spring Street
Melbourne Victoria 3000 Australia

Telephone: + 61 3  9633 6000

Email: info@thehotelwindsor.com.au

Web: www.thehotelwindsor.com.au

 


I love High Tea. There’s no two way about it. I adore having an afternoon out with the girls in a beautiful setting to sip on my tea….

You might be interested in my experience at Langham High Tea(Not Good) and Dolls at the Mount(Amazing). I am slowly collecting reviews of all high tea places around town. Have another one up my sleeve after today’s review on the Windsor!


There is no two way about it. The Windsor is beautiful. If you wanted High Tea in an amazingly elegant and beautiful surroundings then Windsor is your place to go. This is of course, before we start talking about the food. I thought I had photos of the inside, but apparently not. Instead you get a photo of how our table was laid out when we arrived at our table.


With an adorable old man tickling the ivories on the grand piano, we are started off with our high tea with a glass of bubblies. So unmemorable was this glass of bubblies that I don’t even remember what it was anymore. It was dry, it was not very nice and none of us finished it. Not a nice note to start on!


Then our silver three tier of savouries arrived. Dearie me, my photos seem to all be missing. I did manage to retrieve this one photo of the scones. Again, nothing memorable. They were nicer than Langham’s rocks aka scones, but still not as good as Dolls At the Mount.

The sandwiches were (hallelujah) not made of just butter, each of them tasting pretty fresh. No complaints there, I was happy! The little pies were alright. Nothing to write home about.




We got through most of the savouries without any tea. Not because we didn’t want it, more because we weren’t given any. At long last the waitress popped by to take our tea order. I do loved the teas that were up on offer though : such beautiful sounding teas!

Really wish they had started taking tea orders earlier, I’d have loved to go for quite a different types through the whole session.




Obligatory shot of the chocolate fountain. Definitely eye catching, it was the tallest thing in the whole room! Mmmm. Have more shots of the different desserts up on offer:





The one thing I really appreciated about these desserts were that they weren’t the Sugar Bombs I experienced at The Langham. For that, I will be eternally grateful. I wouldn’t say they were particularly mindblowing but they were pleasant in that they weren’t overly sweet. They were very rich tho, especially the chocolate desserts.




One thing I did find incredibly sweet : the fact that they went around to every table to ask if someone on the table had a birthday. It so happened that it was my birthday soon and my lovely friends told them it was my birthday while I was away oogling at the dessert table. So when this arrived… I got a huge surprise.



I was absolutely delighted. It’s such a sweet thing to do! And seeing as I moved away to the country before my birthday, I never did get my birthday cake nor celebrations so this was the closest I did get to a celebration. And I loved every minute of it. Thank you girls!

So in conclusion? I’ll go to Windsor for the atmosphere, for the surroundings and not for the food. If you want mind blowing food, and I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Go to Dolls At the Mount. Address and contact details can be found here.

Filed Under: High Tea, Melbourne, Melbourne CBD Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
Review: Langham High Tea @ Aria Bar in Melbourne

Review: Langham High Tea @ Aria Bar in Melbourne

November 16, 2010 by · 20 Comments



The Langham High Tea comes highly recommended. Many of my friends have constantly nudged me and said “go try it, it’s awesome.” I mean, a Chocolate Bar. While I may not be much of a chocolate eater, I do enjoy the occasional chocolate. So I was quite delighted when a friend decided to pick the Langham High Tea as her birthday high tea. An afternoon of decadence, chocolate and amazing company. I was pleased as pleased can be.



High tea started with a beautiful 3 layer stand of sandwiches, fruit scones and beautiful looking cream and jam. We ordered a variety of teas to go with our afternoon indulgence and squealed delightedly over the aromatic teas of white roses, strawberries and other flowery scents. I adore herbal teas, and was quite happy to see an entire tea menu to support that.



The sandwiches came in a variety of breads. The little rolls of bread and smoked salmon were no bigger than a 20 cent coin but packed full of flavour. One tiny sandwich, one mouthful of delightful flavour. I loved this and wished there were more! More did come later on, when the waiter came by to top up the trays. But we declined any of the other sandwiches because despite the rest looking different from each other, they all tasted the same. Of greasy butter.

It’s pretty disturbing when you take a bite of a sandwich but can’t even taste the bread. Strike one.

This was the first sign of a slippery downhill slope.



The scones were small and while they weren’t bad, they weren’t very memorable either. They were oddly crunchy on the outside, and not very fluffy on the inside. It was a far, far cry from the beautifully fluffy scones I last had at Dolls at the mount.



Chattering amongst ourselves, we told each other to look past the disappointing sandwich tower. There’s the chocolate bar to look forward to! It was most definitely a visual feast with everything beautifully laid out. The explosion of colour and the prospect of yummy sweets to tantalize our tastebuds spurred us on and we piled our plates up eagerly.



It also happened to be Macaron Day, and while I can’t be in Sydney to queue up for Adriano Zumbo’s amazing macarons, I was delighted to find some at Langham. But how fast such excitement can turn. I sank my teeth eagerly into one, and stopped short. I couldn’t get my teeth through it. And there is something very wrong when you can’t even bite through a macaron. A treat that is famous for being incredibly delicate, that falls apart and melts upon your tongue. And here I was, trying in vain to take a first bite.

I could throw the macaron at somebody and it would hurt. Eventually, I managed to get my teeth through and the shell was more like a cracker or a biscuit than anything else. The filling was impossibly sweet and around the table, the other girls were discreetly pushing their macarons to the side of the plate. Strike two.



How pretty and dainty does the sweets look? Pushing past the disappointment of the macarons, we soldiered on and proceeded to be gunned down by the Sugar Squad. I do have quite the sweet tooth, and I can take some rather sweet things. But even I started to cringe at the amount of sugar that had gone into these desserts. Did somebody read the measurements wrong and doubled the quantity of sugar around the table? Or did somebody misread flour for sugar? Everything I tried was a sugarbomb. Exploding in my mouth with no other flavours than an excruciating sweetness.

And it wasn’t just me either. Our table of sweet-loving girls all agreed that everything was just a sugarbomb. It didn’t matter whether it was a cake or a jelly. Green or Yellow or even Red. Everything was overly sweet and generally, not very enjoyable. There comes a point where things are too sweet to enjoy and the sweet treats at Langham definitely crossed that line. Strike Three.



I was desperately hoping that the souffle wouldn’t be too sweet. Desperately willing it to be just the right amount of sweetness, wanting something to be memorable from this high tea. But I was disappointed. While the texture was absolutely beautiful, it was overly sweet and quite eggy in flavour. The eggy-ness didn’t bother me, but the sweetness definitely did.

Thank god for amazing company or the afternoon would have been a waste. But it was K’s birthday and I had an absolutely brilliant time chatting with the girls about everything under the sun. The food however, is a different story. At a whooping $65.00 per person, you won’t find me going back there in a hurry. Disappointment, doesn’t even begin to describe it.

($59.00 per person normally, but because of the Macarons event going on right now, it’s currently $65.00 per person)

Aria bar and lounge (melba) on Urbanspoon

Aria bar and lounge (melba)

(18) 0064 1107
Southbank
The Langham 1 Southgate Avenue Southbank
Melbourne, 3006

p/s: Some of the photos here were taken by K. Do visit her new blog!

Filed Under: High Tea, Melbourne, Melbourne CBD Tagged With: , , , , , ,
A Mad Hatter’s Tea Party turned pink!

A Mad Hatter’s Tea Party turned pink!

October 30, 2010 by · 22 Comments



With the long weekend in sight, it was a perfect time to unwind.

And what better way to unwind than to have a beautiful tea party with the lovely Violet Le Beaux?

We all know that Tea Parties are the love and joy of the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, in fact, our very own Violet was channeling a little bit of Alice today, with the long straight blonde hair and the black headband. Just needed a beautiful blue dress to go with it… Hmmmm wonder if we could swipe one from the Tim Burton exhibition?

I do so love Alice in Wonderland. But everytime I read through the book, I felt that the Mad Hatter’s tea parties always lacked a little something… Can you guess what it was that it lacked?



It lacked a little PINK, and a little Charm and was also sorely missing in some princess action.

So we changed it around, to make this tea party perfect! Starting with the adorable little pink tea pot, which was perfect for tea for two. Tea for the day was Rose and French Vanilla from Dilmah, very very yummy!



It’s not just teapots that need to be pretty. We polished our very best fancy tea set and coaxed the flower pixies to come out to play. You can’t just set a tea set down and call that a tea party! I mean, next you will be saying that merely having tea would be good enough!



Every single aspect has to be perfect. For the perfect tea party, you can’t go wrong with cake tea spoons. There’s more than one way to eat your cake, after all. Violet keeps a collection of such silverware beauties around for when princesses and maidens come round for tea. Which is quite often, as we do love our teas.



Just look at the amazingly beautiful hanky that Violet embroidered! Polite tea party conversation involved the ooh-ing and aah-ing over such delicate handiworks and there was much discussion on how we could add more pink to the world. Pink world domination! In the gentlest and most princess-y of ways, of course.



Pour out the tea, give it a swirl with your cake spoon, and you are ready to go! Tea Party to relax your weary souls, and something the Mad Hatter himself would have been proud of. Had he been a fan of pink of course. Oh, and of princesses. It’s not very Mad, but it was definitely very Rad.



And what tea party would be complete without nibbles and cakes? I brought along for us all, Chocolate and Coffee Fudge Cupcakes, don’t worry I’ll share the recipe with you soon. It was quite rich and quite decadent. Fit for a beautiful spring afternoon’s tea party.

We had a beautiful afternoon, having our very own tea party with a nod towards the Mad Hatter for sharing his love of tea parties with us. There’s really nothing more relaxing than having a girlie afternoon with your best girlfriend over some decadent cupcakes and amazingly delicious tea.



So, would you care to join us for a cuppa or two?

Images courtesy of myself and Jimmy from Blue Crane Designs

Filed Under: Competition, High Tea, Socializing & Events Tagged With: , , , , ,
Review: Dolls At the Mount @ Heidelberg, VIC.

Review: Dolls At the Mount @ Heidelberg, VIC.

October 6, 2010 by · 44 Comments

It has come to my attention that Dolls At the Mount is no longer open. This news saddens me greatly and I would like a minute of silence to mourn the disappearance of one of Melbourne’s best kept secrets and the yummiest scones I’ve ever eaten.

I love tea. I love high tea. I love all kinds of afternoon teas where you sit down and drink tea and have little bits of cake and sandwiches on very pretty plates.

It just feels luxurious, decadent and a whole lot of my dreams take place in such places.

So when I saw Lorraine post up about Dolls At the Mount, I knew straightaway that I would be visiting that place. There was no two ways about it, I was most definitely going there.



And so I did.

The experience is surreal from the get-go. You ring the doorbell and wait for a lovely lady in white to bring you through the house. It’s like popping up at a friend’s place for a spot of afternoon tea! Step through the door and you are faced with rows and rows of dollies and bears and beautiful pink things that I wish my house had space for.

The dining room was quaint, small but cozy and a vintage piano sat in the corner. My fingers itched to be able to run across its ivory keys but I’m sure that the owners of Dolls At the Mount wouldn’t have been very amused with me if I did.

We were given a window seat which was perfect for watching the visiting birds. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful Spring day. Despite being in the middle of the day, it was fairly quiet and serene and not once did I hear any loud noises. Not even from the train tracks nearby.



I took a quick look through the menu but I knew what I wanted. Having seen visions of grandeur from Lorraine’s blog, I wasn’t going to settle for anything else. It was the special occasion tea for me. Luckily for me, my afternoon tea partners agreed.

We were informed that our banquet would take awhile to prepare so please do feel free to step through to the other room where the doll musuem was housed. I didn’t need a second invitation. I love dolls and hopefully, dolls love me!



Noddy! I love Noddy! It’s been forever but I still love him.





Hello Kitty stove! I had to show you guys these photo because you know you would totally get loads more cooking done on this stove ;p



Having amused myself sufficiently in the dolls musuem, I settled back down and admired the pretty cups and saucers. Everybody had a different cup and saucer design which makes me think that rather than buying everything from a shop, the tea sets had been lovingly scouted and hunted down from Op shops and Antique shops. How lovely are these?



I had ordered Vanilla tea for the table and it was met with nods and smiles of approval. Beautifully fragrant and so delicious, it was superb without sugar but with a tinge of sugar and milk, it started tasting like ice cream! Amazing. I was suitably entranced , that is until the food arrived.



When that appeared on the table, I started regretting eating anything that day. Granted, I did only eat a Banh Mi, but I needed every inch of tummy space for this beauty! There were giant sponge cakes of delicious doom, the most mouthwatering and fresh sandwiches, cupcakes, biscotti, meringues, melting moments and to wind it all up, fruits to cleanse the palate.



Giant, giant sponge cake of delicious doom…. There were 3 of each item, one each for the 3 of us. And it wasn’t just us who were staring at this beautiful tower of food wide eyed and open mouthed. The tables next to us started staring and pointing fingers too. Everybody in the room was as entranced by this as we were!



How could you not fall in love with beautiful cupcakes such as these? These were superb, the frosting melts on the tongue and it wasn’t tooth-achingly sweet either. But my favourite was the meringues. Those were out of these world amazing. Amazing, I tell you.



And just in case you thought you didn’t have enough food for a hearty afternoon tea, out came these freshly baked scones along with fresh cream and strawberry jam. And let me assure you, these are THE BEST scones you will find in Melbourne. (Let’s not bring into the argument scones baked by your mum, or your grandmother, or somebody. Home made scones are not part of this argument!) Light and fluffy, every bite was a roll-about in heaven. I was on clouds!



Oh yummy yummy scones. And let me tell you this. I’m not even that big a fan of scones. My first experience of scones were terrible. They were rock hard and ultimately very yuck. But these? These have changed the way I look at scones forever. Forget Miss Marples and their giant not-scones. Save yourself the angst and get yourself a booking at Dolls at the Mount. It’s worth it.

Me? I’m just counting down to the next time I can go back to Dolls at the Mount.

Dolls At the Mount (Website)

Tel: (03) 9457 3356

Address: 54 Mount Street,
Heidelberg, 3084

Dolls at the Mount on Urbanspoon

Filed Under: Heidelberg, High Tea, Melbourne Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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