Over the recent long weekend, Z and I visited the St Regis for what we had thought would be a nice, luxurious high tea. Well it did feel luxurious indeed, with the high ceilings, opulent furnishings of their Brasserie Les Saveurs restaurant and wonderful live tunes from the resident pianist.

Absolutely beautiful ambience and a lovely place to sit back, relax and sip tea, but don’t go there expecting to have delicious food to nibble on while doing so.

It started with the coffee/tea. While I enjoyed my lovely TWG Emperor’s Garden White Tea, which was light and refreshing, Z was rather unhappy with his double shot mocha (his standard drink at most establishments), saying that it was sour. I had a sip and indeed it tasted rather strange.

Also, only one choice was allowed, so you could not change your drink halfway through if you disliked it.

The high tea buffet at Brasserie Les Saveurs includes a standard three-tier set that is served to your table, as well as self-serve scones, cheese, savoury bites, and dessert counters. There is also a live station where you can request for a wait staff to make fresh crepes or waffles.

I’m going to touch on the service first. Being a restaurant housed within a ‘premier five star hotel in the city’, one might expect really good service from them. And it was decent – but just that.

The waitress who served us the three-tier did not offer to explain what the items were, and when asked, was not even sure what type of soup was on the stand. Another member of the staff interrogated me about my picture taking and said that I should speak to their ‘communications people’. The manager came over to apologize but did not seem genuinely sorry.

I wasn’t too bothered with the concerned wait staff though as she explained that it was the policy at her previous hotel, and apologized profusely after and even served a special crepe to us. In general the rest of the wait staff were all quite polite, spoke nicely to us and were well groomed, so that was pleasant.

On to the food – which was unfortunately, quite disappointing.

Having read reviews about the wonderful scones bar and fresh, delectable scones, I (we, actually) was/were rather unimpressed with the taste of the scones served at this high tea.

The beautiful selection of colourful jams did look very promising, but were really just so-so.

The scones were kind of hard and dry and lacked the moistness of nice, fresh ones. Perhaps they had been left out for too long?

The much raved about truffle flavoured one was also quite disappointing to me, as I barely even tasted any truffle in it at all. The duck one was not too bad, but nothing spectacular though. I also wished the scones were fluffier.

I thought the smoked salmon and jamon were quite nice, but also quite run-of-the-mill. The pate thing was a bit more unusual, but I didn’t really like that.

Sushi tasted okay but actually seemed a bit random next to scones, savoury bites and the desserts. I also felt that the selection of savoury items could be a little wider, and also not so carbo heavy – it felt like everything we were eating was completely carb-laden to fill us up.

As for the items on the three tier stand, the spiced carrot soup was quite nice and creamy and the beef potpie next to it fairly tasty too (beef was tender, pastry was flaky and crunchy, though maybe a tad oily).

The second tier featured a bacon quiche and a mushroom pie of sorts – these were a little too egg custard-ish – couldn’t really taste the bacon or mushroom flavours.

The finger sandwiches were again okay but not fantastic. We didn’t opt for a refill of this stand.

The desserts bar looked so beautiful and full of yummy desserts! But these again, looked better than they tasted. They were all quite similar after a while, in terms of taste, texture and elements.

There were two desserts which stood out though – the strawberry panna cotta and blueberry green tea mouse. The panna cotta was smooth and slightly sweet, and went well with the nice strawberry paste, fresh strawberries and delicious almond caramel crisp that topped it.  Delicious.

And the blueberry green tea mouse was nice, but the opera cake on the other hand, was a soggy shadow of what it should have been – rich, chocolatey and crisp.

The other cakes I tried were pretty much the same, very run-of-the-mill. The chocolate fondue was a nice touch, with quite a good variety of items to dip into the yummy molten liquid (like strawberries, blueberries, madelines, mashmallows etc), so that was at least quite enjoyable.

Thankfully there was a selection of fresh fruits as well, as they were probably one of the best things at the dessert station. The mangosteens and oranges especially, were beautifully ripe and sweet.

I’d say if you don’t really care about the food and would just like to treat yourself to some nice relaxing tea time with minimal snacks in a beautiful place (after a full meal), then you could possibly consider Brasseries Les Saveurs as an option.

Though at S$46++ per pax (from Thursdays to Sundays and S$56++ on Saturdays as there is a ‘tea dance’), you could possibly find somewhere else that can give you both ambience and delicious food, or maybe just opt for a la carte here.

I still have the impression that the dinner dishes here are quite innovative and tasty, so will have to perhaps try and drop in again sometime for these. But, would very unlikely be back here again for high tea.

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Brasserie Les Saveurs
(The Grand Astor Afternoon Tea, 3 to 5pm in the Astor Bar or 4 to 6pm in the main Brasserie Les Saveurs restaurant)
The St. Regis Singapore, Lobby Level
29 Tanglin Road, Singapore 247911

Tel: +65 6506 6860
Website: http://www.brasserielessaveurs.com/

Open daily from 6.30am to 11.00pm.