One of my favourite annual traditions, as a self-confessed high tea expert, is a festive high tea.
This year I took my 9 year old daughter Rose to the Bacchus Festive High Tea in Rydges South Bank Hotel.
If you like high teas, have a look at my list of the best high teas in Brisbane.
Bacchus High Tea: The Setting
Bacchus is an upscale restaurant located near the pool at Rydges Hotel in South Bank. It’s an award-winning restaurant and has a modern, classy ambience to match.
On weekends they offer a high tea, and as the festive season approaches this high tea takes on a Christmas theme.
Bacchus High Tea: The Menu
The high tea is a traditional offering with some modern twists.
Parents will be pleased to know that there is a dedicated high tea menu for kids, making this upscale restaurant a surprisingly family-friendly choice.
The Tea
The tea selection comes from Harney & Sons, or you can choose a barista-made coffee. Rose chose African Autumn – a herbal tea that smelled and tasted delicious – and I had Pomegranate Oolong – a white tea which was lightly sweet thanks to the pomegranate, and really quite lovely.
The tea was a little slow to be served – in fact, we had already finished our savouries when it finally arrived.
You can add endless bubbles onto your high tea as an additional extra.
Keep scrolling to watch our video of the Bacchus high tea experience. And make sure you are following @tearoomtravel on Instagram for more things to do in Brisbane and beyond!
The Savouries
On the adults’ high tea, the savouries consisted of a Christmas turkey slider, a prawn cocktail bun, a pork terrine bite, a cream cheese and salad tea sandwich and a duck spring roll. On the children’s high tea there was the same turkey slider, spring roll and cream cheese tea sandwich, along with an egg sandwich.
As a high tea purist, I was very pleased to see a cream cheese sandwich on the menu – perhaps the most quintessential of all high tea sandwiches. This one had a touch of citrus with the yuzu cream cheese.
The spring roll was nice but unfortunately cold. We both agreed the turkey slider was the winner – delicious on the croissant bun with a little sweetness from the cranberry jam. Plus, it’s Christmas and you can’t get much more Christmassy than turkey and cranberry sauce!
The Scones
We each got two scones, which was generous for the children’s high tea. There was one cranberry scone and one chocolate scone, served with jam and cream. The jam was sweet and delicious and the cream was whipped, light and fluffy but could have been thicker. If we can’t have clotted cream in Australia, we at least want to get our cream to the thickest possible consistency!
Want to know where we’ve had the thickest cream in Australia? Find out here.
The cranberry scone was nice but tasted much like a standard scone. The chocolate scone, however, was out of this world good – dark, rich, and when lightened with the jam and cream it was just sensational.
The Sweets
The sweets were very festive in theme. On the adults’ high tea we had a a macaron, a chestnut Christmas tree, a cherry Santa hat and a jasmine snow cube. On the children’s high tea there was the same macaron and Santa hat, along with a cheesecake cube, and a Ferrerro Rocher cube.
The macaron on both high teas was coffee flavoured, which felt like an unusual choice for a children’s high tea. The Santa hat featured cherry, coconut and chocolate flavours, but these didn’t quite work together. The Christmas tree looked so pretty, but the matcha flavour was strong and bitter, and not as sweet as we would have liked. The snow cube combined jasmine and mango – again, an unusual pairing that didn’t quite hit the mark.
Everything looked very cute and Christmassy, with Santa hats, Christmas trees and macarons decorated with reindeers and snowflakes. However, the sophisticated flavours didn’t quite land for us. The matcha and jasmine tea flavours were not especially enjoyable to eat, and some of the other flavour combinations felt mismatched. My favourite sweet was the coffee macaron, but the children’s macaron really should have been a different flavour.
It’s unusual for us to say this, but the sweets were our least favourite part of the high tea!
Bacchus High Tea: Final Thoughts
The Bacchus high tea is a sophisticated offering with adult flavours. Some of the flavour combinations – particularly the modern elements like matcha and jasmine – were a little too unusual for our palates.
Thumbs up for the tea, the turkey sliders and the chocolate scones, and I loved the Christmas theme running through the experience. While it might not have been our favourite high tea, there were some real standout elements.
Have a look at our list of the best high teas in Brisbane here.
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