Vancouver: Tea at the Fairmont Pacific Rim

Blogging sure has been inconsistent around here lately, huh? I'm so behind! I've got a ton of things to talk about (my Flickr is way more caught up) but no time lately! We were just in Chicago over last weekend and although I have exactly one food pic, a highlight of the trip was meeting fellow blogger PopArtichoke! Anyway--that post will have to wait, I am determined to go in order. So, let us hop in the time machine and head back to my Vancouver trip in September....

You probably know by now that I love me some afternoon tea and I am definitely not one to pass up an opportunity to try out a new place! (I have secret plans to work my way through all of the afternoon teas on offer in Vancouver.) This time, we decided to try out the tea at the Fairmont Pacific Rim, which is located at Canada Place. The tea is served in the Lobby Lounge, which is a nice, comfortable space although sadly doesn't have the amazing views of the mountains that you get directly outside (and presumably from the hotel rooms!) We sprung for the champagne tea (can you think of a better way to spend a Sunday? I can't!) and were promptly brought glasses of bubbly, followed by a tea service (and one comment about that to the hotel--get your poor servers some higher rolling carts for pete's sake! These poor ladies were bent double pushing tea carts around.)


So the twist here is that there is a bit of an Asian influence going on; there are "sushi style" offerings in addition to the traditional tea sandwiches. If you look at the top photo you'll see there is even some actual sushi. This prawn and avocado open-faced sandwich wasn't particularly Asian but was pretty yummy!


A play on gunkan-maki, with the sushi rice wrapped in a strip of cucumber and topped with crab and tobiko.


And one of my faves, a truffled egg salad sandwich. I'm not super wild about the flavor of truffles or truffle oil but it was nice here.


And of course, you have to have scones at afternoon tea! These were nice and light, served with cream and sour cherry compote. I really could have put away another scone or two! But I do love the plates they used. Somehow I did not manage to get another shot of the sweets, but if I remember correctly (and it has been a while, I guess!) my favorites were the financier and the lychee and green tea cake.


In closing, here's a bonus shot of some random chips I picked up at T&T. I can now report that the Roasted Chicken one was disgusting! But the spicy one was not too bad. Plus, how can you resist that evil chili pepper face?

Hopefully posting will now be less erratic! I mean, are there even any readers left? Anyone out there? Hellooooo!!

A quickie post

No time to post lately! Work busy (boo)! Pyota visiting (yay!) But here are some pictures of what we've been eating (and drinking)....(starting with this drink from Angel Share.)


Duck appetizer from Robataya. They have a ridiculously good value tasting menu, but you should be really really hungry before you order it. I'll have to try to recreate their gyu daikon.


Sashimi, also from Robataya. Both photos (and the one on top) taken with Py's new camera.


We went for an afternoon tea at the Peninsula Hotel--it's definitely not as good as the tea at the Peninsula in Hong Kong, but still pretty good. Quieter, too (but no string quartet playing Kiss covers!)


Py had an incident with his scone, but mine was good :)


Mm, tiny pastries.


Maybe I should just have a tea set-up like this at home....

Well, that's all for now! I think after this week things will be calmer at work, and I'll probably sleep for about 2 days straight. And I'm really excited about our dinner plans tomorrow, because it's my birthday :)

Hong Kong Post: High Tea at the Peninsula

You'll forgive me if I get around to my HK posts in a higgledy-piggledy order, but hey, this is a food blog (mostly!) and so can you blame me for writing about the food first?? I had a very short list of things that I HAD to do in Hong Kong (most of which had to do with eating) and on top of that list was to have high tea at the Peninsula Hotel. The Peninsula is one of the best hotels in the world, and if you can't afford to stay there (and I sure can't! There were a lot of Rolls Royces parked in front of it.) then the next best thing is to go and have afternoon tea in the lobby. (For the men, apparently going up to the Felix to have a pee is a highlight for the view while you, er, relieve yourself, but we didn't do that.)


But I'm getting ahead of myself. We took the Star Ferry over to Kowloon side and on the way there, passed this junk. Isn't it neat? I couldn't tell if it was a boat cruise for tourists (my best guess) but it's a super neat looking boat. And the Star Ferry is a great way to see the HK skyline (and so cheap! It's 2.50 HKD which is like, 30 cents U.S.).

I wish I had photos of the exterior of the Peninsula to show you...or photos of the lobby, but I don't know, I guess I was just so focused on getting to that tea! That it didn't occur to me until afterwards. There was a bit of a line, but we occupied ourselves by listening to the string quartet and trying to figure out what some of the maddeningly familiar songs were (I am 99% sure one of them was Kiss' I Was Made For Loving You. It sure sounds classy when played by a string quartet!). But soon enough, we were seated, and chose our teas (served in proper style with a tea strainer), and contemplated this:


Oooh man. They bring you a three-tiered stand, the top of which is filled with sweets! You can guess which tier I was most anxiously staring at. The sweets tier had raspberry macarons, a strawberry roll cake, and a chocolate coffee layer cake.


Here's the other side of the tier: mini slices of fruitcake and a raspberry mousse cake. Although, before we started on those, we went in for the savory tidbits.


Here, we have ham and egg salad sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, salmon sandwich (singular), mini quiche, and some sort of vegetable pastry. Actually my one quibble is that they gave us only one salmon sandwich! I mean, we did order the tea for two...anyway, my favorite things were the ham and egg salad sandwiches and the vegetable pastry! Delicious.


Next, the scones. And these are REAL scones--I am not a fan of American scones which are usually huge and way too sweet. I like them more like biscuits--all I want is maybe a few currants and then a dollop of clotted cream and a bit of jam. These, as you might imagine, are top notch. I did think it was a bit strange that they brought out three for the two of us but as it turned out, this entire tea turned out to be much more filling than it looked, and it was with great regret that we had to leave one scone uneaten. Trust me, I was very sad about it. There is also a little pastry wafer on this tier.


See? Could there be anything better than this and a cup of tea? Oh, right--dessert!


We slowly tasted our way through everything, and my favorites were this gorgeously colored cake and the strawberry roll cake. The macarons were okay, but having tasted the platonic deal (Laduree, with Paulette a close second)...they didn't quite do it for me. And just when we thought we were done...


One last dessert! They brought out these cute little espresso cups with a scoop of coffee sorbet on top. Underneath we discovered a yummy tiramisu. Delicious! A perfect ending to a wonderful experience. And no, I was hardly the only one taking photos of my tea ;) This may be a touristy thing to do, but I recommend it highly for anyone, tourist or local! It's an hour or two of peace and tranquility, something that can be hard to come by in frenetic Hong Kong.

Next installment: awesome stuff around HK. And yes, more food.