High Tea Buffet at the Goodwood Park

Goodwood Park Hotel

Today i brought my Granny to the Goodwood for high tea. I prefer the Goodwood because it's all English. There's no Asian items, i mean i have nothing against Asian food but i can't justify Mee Goreng or Popiah for high tea. I had been to the high tea before and i really enjoyed their savoury section. A commendable selection of items i must say.

Anyways, i picked up my Granny late and so had to quickly call the restaurant to secure my reservation. Complimentary tea or coffee is served but i don't drink either. But this is high tea right.. i mean how can you have high tea without the tea ? And so i had Rose hip and Hibiscus whilst Mom had Earl Grey.

Granny

Granny came in her beautiful sari and started with the cold sandwiches. There were so many of them and in different shapes too. The rectangular one was egg, square was ham and mustard, triangle was tuna and roast beef and another square was cucumber. Other cold dishes were smoked salmon and salad, foie gras with candied oranges, smoked salmon canape with caviar, filled vol-au-vents, croissants with ham, prawns and beef, just to name a few.

Sandwiches and Canapes

We didn't have the beef items but the rest of them were really good. There was this particular item, crostini with cream cheese and dried tomatoes. Oh my god it was delicious ! Then there was the hot section with potato croquettes, some long-ish fried spring roll (they couldn't keep it all English i guess), panini with cheese and rocket (good !!) and pasta bake (really good!!). The panini was crisp with rocket and cheese and pasta bake had heaps vegetables and cheese which was really nice as opppsed to mouthfuls of filling pasta.

Desserts

The dessert section...mmm... there were scones, bread and butter pudding, apple tart, matcha and white chocolate tart , chocolate mousse cake. What we had on the plate were, strawberry tart, eclair, custard cup (i call it that because i have no idea what it was), blueberry cake and lemon meringue tart. The lemon meringue was different in that the base was filled with frangipani and then finished with a dollop of lemon curd and a swirl of meringue, perfectly torched to brown the edges.

Creme Brulee

Mom simply adored the Creme Brulee. The custard was good and i like the tiny vanilla seeds that settled at the bottom. However, the sugar didn't impress me. I felt it was too coarse. I could still see and eat the sugar grains. Not good in my book. I reckon finer sugar should have been used so that when torched there is layer of burnt sugar without the texture of grains. Mom couldn't care less and was helping herself to heaps of them. She reckons its the best she's had so far in Singapore at least. I actually preferred the ones Mom made for dinner once. Weird.

Opera Cake

The Opera Cake was okay. I found the butter cream a bit too much to handle. Maybe it was Italian butter cream because it left a film in my mouth after finishing it which i didn't really like. But i am always amazed by layers in cakes and the perfect cuts where the layers don't run into each other when they're sliced.

Chocolate Ice Cream

The ice cream though limited in selection, there's only vanilla and chocolate, is excellent. The vanilla ice cream is bespeckled with tiny vanilla seeds and tastes oh so divine and pure. Pure because it tastes like really good home made vanilla ice cream. The chocolate ice cream at the Goodwood is always special. It's smooth creamy and laden with chocolate flakes. Can you see the flakes in the picture. The ice cream is kept in these metal canisters and so they're not really rock hard but really soft. Too bad to all those who like their ice-cream solid. So anways, my scoop gave in to the heat real fast and so i could see the flakes swimming arond in my cup. Really really yummy stuff people.

English Afternoon Tea
Goodwood Park Hotel
L'Espresso
2-5pm Mon-Thurs
2.30-5pm Fri - Sun and Public Holidays

Cost : S$33 ++ (price as of June 2009)