Afternoon Tea at Shangri-La Hotel's Lobby & Patio

1128 West Georgia Street, Vancouver

Afternoon Tea Hours: 1-5pm

Cost: $36 each person

Reservations can be made though OpenTable  

Date of the visit: Feb 14, 2011

As you may have noticed, my high tea at Shangri-La Hotel's Lobby was on a Valentine's Day.  My bf and I wanted to try something different so we went for High Tea for the first time.  My reservation was at 3:30 pm, and there were only two tables occupied at that time.  There wasn't a special menu for Valentine's Day, which is a good thing considering special menus are usually higher in price than the regular menus. 

Ratings (out of five stars)

Food * *

 (Top picture: ooops I spilled some tea on the table.. hehee)

The high tea started with the tea, of course.  There was a large selection of teas to choose from, which was divided to green, black, red, and fruity teas.  I had a fruity tea that I really liked, and my boyfriend had Japanese cherry green tea that he liked a lot too.  Then the scones (one each) came with three different kinds of spreads (cream cheese, raspberry, and peach).  The scones had just the right softness and the spreads tasted well with the scones. The highly anticipated three-tier high tea tray came after the scones.  The bottom layer was the petite sandwiches (smoke salmon, roast beef, and one that I forgot) and a half croissant with egg salad.  The smoke salmon petite sandwich tasted great, and it was the best item in the whole meal.  The middle layer was some random pastry, including a wrap with Portobello mushrooms and veggies, and BBQ pork in a puffed bun, and shredded pork, green onions, and red onion on chow mien.  Sounds amazingly like Chinese food eh?  It tasted amazingly like Chinese food too…  I was not expecting to eat Chinese food in high tea and I was not impressed.  The top layer was the dessert, which has fortune cookie (seriously!), Chinese crunchy cookie, lychee flavoured jelly with Gogi berry, and Shangri-La’s signature cake.  I liked the signature cake, but I was so disappointed of the other dessert items.  I mean, comm’on I can buy them directly from the T&T supermarket.  I would expect more, much more, from Shangri-La Hotel.

The food in general tasted fine (which explains the two stars) but it was definitely lacking creativity.

Value *

To me it was not a value at all!  For that amount of money, I can get a really decent prime rib dinner at the Keg.  I understand that it is supposedly a high class setting and that high tea is generally more pricey than a meal, but for the food I get it is not worth the money.  Although me and my bf had a bit of fun opening the fortune cookie and reading our fortunes, fortune cookies in high tea is a definite turn off to me.  I was going to give zero star for value, but for the service and ambience that we had for amount of time we spent there, I would give it 1 star.

Ambience * * *

It was a relaxing ambience; the seats were comfortable and the ceiling was high.  It could add more decors to create a luxury or elegant ambience.  Since the lobby was facing Arbutus Street, my seat was facing the side of the Urban Fare. 

Service * * * * *

The host was very attentive; he greeted me and my boyfriend immediately when he saw us checking out the menu by the lobby entrance.  He placed us by the window, so we were seated comfortably on an armchair with a decently sized table for high tea.  Our server was quick, and he checked on our tea a few times to see if more water was needed.

Overall * *

I will definitely WILL NOT go back, and I WILL NOT recommend anyone to have high tea there, unless they change the menu.  For the price, I believe there are better high tea places than Shangri-La Hotel.