high tea at the victoria room

I organised a birthday surprise for a girlfriend from work where I made bookings for a massage at a spa followed by high tea at The Victoria Room. We missed the massage due to a bad traffic jam and radiator problems with my car that almost led to the engine overheating, but arrived in Darlinghurst in time for the much anticipated afternoon tea.

Someone once told me he gets a real kick out of capturing that look of disbelief and rapture whenever he takes a friend to The Victoria Room for the first time and told me to keep a lookout for it on my girlfriend's face. Sure enough, the rapid change from a look of boredom to one of girlish ecstatic delight within seconds of leaving the plainly painted external corridor and entering into the richly decorated interior of the dining establishment set off a proud sense of achievement in me. ^^v


This is one section of the sophisticated dining room decorated in British-Raj style in the specially designed ambient lighting. Depending on which table you get allocated to, you'll get a different dining experience in a different setting each time against the various backdrops of decorative screens, luxurious drapes, rich wallpaper, splendid paintings and lush palms.


Left: Took us a while to study the cocktail menu in the candle light.
Right: Mini sandwiches, assorted sweeties and scones kept us nom-nom-ing the whole afternoon.


Here I'm helping myself to a red velvet cupcake topped with creamed cheese icing. Heavenly.


I swallowed the dark chocolate cup with chocolate mousse, cream and fresh raspberry in one gulp. Mmmmmm......


Left: My date for the nice afternoon of genteel dining.
Right: That's me looking satisfied.


Not wanting to turn on the flash for the phototaking lest we disturb the other patrons - which explains all the above dark photos, we eventually had to turn it on so that the server can get a decent unblur pic of the two of us. As you can see, we cleaned out the tiers of goodies.

It was an afternoon of extreme indulgence. Totally enjoyed it. Living the high life indeed.