Day 6

For the last 2 years, my colleagues have raved about high tea at the Fullerton Hotel. Even Anthony Bourdain suggested it on his show, "The Layover".

Maybe my standards for high tea are different than theirs.  Here is what I look for when I choose a venue for high tea.  I like a nice relaxing, quite atmosphere with some sort of classical music, preferably piano and a live performer of course would be icing on the cake. High tea is suppose to be a way of taking a breather in the middle of the day to have a cup of tea, some delicate snacks, and sweets to rejuvenate one's self.  Its also a great way to relax with some friends and catch up on the latest in each other's lives. 

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the Fullerton Hotel is that their high tea is served right in the lobby almost immediately after the front entrance. This means that everyone who enters the hotel becomes a part of your experience. That includes crying babies, rowdy children, people dragging their luggage, shoppers in the various retail stores that surrounds the tea venue, etc.  If I was looking for an open air coffee shop to people watch in the hallway of a mall, this place would be perfect.

Nonetheless since I already paid the cab fare to get there, I might as well stay to see if my experience will improve.  Everything deserves a chance.  So I ordered the tea set and a pot of pai mu tan white tea.  Pai mu tan is Chinese for white peony flower.  It was very fragrant with a slight honey hue to it. Quite nice.

Unfortunately the tea set was almost equivalent if not worse than cakes and sandwiches that I would expect to find in a train station vending machine.

The chocolate cake tasted like dark brown butter smeared between slices of mealy, yellow bread. The cheese cake was cream cheese with pastel purple food coloring. The signature crispy layer of burnt sugar that distinguishes creme brulee from regular pudding was in their version, a layer of simple syrup. Simple syrup is a mixture of water and white sugar boiled down to a slight thickness.

The sandwiches were mostly bread with a layer of filling so thin that the only purpose it could serve is to glue the slices of bread together, not a smidgen more.  The canapes' minuscule dallop of inedible topping made the small cuts of bread seem to be the size of plates.

In addition to my disappointment of the food, as I am minding my own business, reading my newspaper and sipping my cup of tea, I hear this snipping sound. Although it was so distinguishable I knew exactly what it was right when I heard it, I just didn't want to believe it could be happening in this so called posh hotel. As much as I didn't want to, I was betrayed by my instincts because right when I heard the sounds I immediately looked up and sure enough, there it was. A saleswoman in the hotel's blindingly, bright lighted "luxury" jewelry store was sitting in the middle of that shop clipping her finger nails. I paid $42 SGD, roughly $33 USD for all this.  Enough said.

From now on if I have a desire to tea again in Singapore, I will stick to my usual haunt - 10 Scott located in the ground floor of the Grand Hyatt hotel. It's a lounge with low couches and slightly dim lighting. Most importantly, although its always open and very welcoming, this place has doors and glass walls that separate it from the rest of the hotel traffic.

Part of the charm of having high tea in former British colonies, especially in Asia, is that sometimes the tea set will include a local dish that's been scaled down to a bite size piece of hors d'oeuvre. At 10 Scott, this comes in the form of a sliced up mini burrito call po piah.  

Po piah means thin cake in Hokkien. Hokkien, otherwise known as Fujian in Mandarin, is one of the many branches of ethnicities within China. There is a fair amount of Hokkien people in southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia and Singapore. And po piah, I believe, is one of their traditional dishes. It resembles a burrito filled with stewed veggies, mainly radishes and carrots, wrapped in a crepe-like shell (the po piah) that's been smeared with a dark plum sauce inside. The combination of sensations on your taste buds created by those savory veggies, sweet sauce, and soft, delicate wrap makes it inexplicably hard to stop eating this deceivingly, simple, veggie "burrito".

For those with a sweet tooth, there's a set up in the back of the room that flambes fresh rings of pineapples with a splash of brandy. This technique surrounds the juicy pineapples with a slight, smokey, burnt caramel flavor. To make it even more sinful, they top it with a scoop of freshly whipped cream. Just sweet enough to satiate any sugar cravings.

I promise this is the last time I write about high tea.

Stay tuned for my next meal...