High Tea at Aria Bar & Lounge, The Langham

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Multicultural Cuisine of... England

Aria Bar & Lounge at The Langham

1 Southgate Ave,

Southbank

(03) 1800 641 107

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"Wouldn't it be nice if we could all just marry rich old men and be ladies of leisure and do this all the time?" comments one of my lovely girlfriends, as we make out way to the Langham Hotel. Ironic, because as we are making our way over, the wind is blowing so hard that we are trying desperately to keep our skirts down and swearing profusely at mother nature. Hardly classy ladies.

A few weeks ago, EJ was speaking to a gentleman that comes into our workplace to use the gym. They were speaking about cakes and dessert (a topic that naturally comes up in a gym), and he mentioned that he worked at the Langham Hotel, and the chef there puts on an absolutely spectacular high tea spread. That was all the convincing we needed. 

EJ, Ms Em, A.Shaw and myself arrived in the very beautiful foyer of the Langham, looking not so beautiful - the wind had completely disheveled our hair and we were shivering with cold.

Up and up we climb, until we reach out destination: Aria Bar and Lounge. We are shown to our seats, and open up our beverage menu, while admiring the beautiful surroundings and giggling at the very posh and proper ladies, dripping with pearls, looking like they do this every Saturday. Our sitting is on a Saturday afternoon from 2:30 - 4:30pm, at $65.00 per person. We're running a few minutes after 2:30 and can already see other table's food... looks goooood!

While we await the arrival of our drinks, out comes an appetising 3-tiered tower of deliciousness...

Our first tier has a collection of gorgeous little sandwich fingers. I wasn't such a fan of the brown/wholemeal bread - the cucumber sandwich was quite boring and bland. The egg sandwich was delicious, but the standout winner was the poached chicken sandwich - absolutely heavenly and creamy! Wish we'd said yes to a second helping now!

The bottom two tiers housed scones and all the fixings. The scones were still warm when we got to them, and we had both plain and sultana scones to choose from. I'm not much of a sultana lover, but the ladies said they were delicious.

I went with the plain scone and raspberry jam, and it was absolutely delicious! So good, I went back for seconds! Warm and soft and crumbly, it tasted perfect with the sweet jam.

Half way through all of this, out came out drinks. A bottle of Moscato to share, as well as a hot chocolate for EJ and a pot of English breakfast tea for the rest of us. And, we got real sugar cubes. Wow.

Finished with our initial three tiers, we decide to venture out into the main sugar arena. Oh my...

We decide to start with the only savoury bite, a caramelised onion and feta quiche. It was amazing. So much so, that we each ate two. Woops!

Now, time to get serious. We've signed up for the Chocolate Bar High Tea, and chocolate is what we want! Here's what came next...

Chocolate Eclairs

 

Amarascata roulade with cocoa nibs

Jaffa Orange Shot

Lemon lime and bitter curd tart

Langham Torte with cherry and brandy

Valhrona chocolate mousse cake with passion fruit jelly topping

Warm chocolate chip pudding

Almond Florentines

Roasted nut and chocolate clusters

Chocolate dipped biscotti

I can't even begin to describe just how incredible they all were... absolutely perfect! My favourites were the Amarascata roulade - the strawberry mousse was just indescribably good, and the Jaffa shot - the combination of the orange and chocolate, with the three different layers, was fabulous. 

We completely lost track of time, and before we knew it we were kindly asked to settle our bill. I felt it was $65 well spent - the food was incredible, the service impeccable - they even brought out an extra three-tiered sandwich and scone tower when they realised they'd catered our table for three instead of four. It was a lovely way for us four ladies of leisure to spend our afternoon - although, now we understand why ladies of leisure must spend so much time at the gym, working it all off! If you haven't done high tea before, I'd highly recommend it. If you have, where have you been, and how was it?

Would rate it 9 out of 10.