High Tea @ No. 1 William

Melanie Pike
10th Dec 2017

When you think of museums, you mostly picture dusty old artifacts and endless plaques to read. Well guess what, when you need refreshments after historical overload, there’s actually a great restaurant on the roof of the Australian Museum, with killer views and great food!

While Sydney Scoop visited earlier this year to check out the regular menu (see link below), this time around we headed up to No. 1 William St to check out its newest menu item… a lovely high tea.

I’ve done a lot of high teas across Sydney and this one has one of the best views I’ve experienced. Sweeping views from the city, across to beautiful St Mary’s cathedral, through the Domain down to the harbour and across to the Finger Wharf in Woolloomoolloo – I warned you it was sweeping!

The high tea itself is a very traditional interpretation of what a high tea can be, which is quite refreshing to see. A lot of places try to get too whimsical and fancy which a lot of the time misses the mark.

There’s three ribbon sandwiches served: egg, chicken and salmon. All well made and enjoyable. And that’s it for the savoury options. No added extras like other venues. This is clearly a high tea you can actually do for afternoon tea, not a full meal in and of itself.

The sweets were tarts and eclairs. While the eclairs had a great custardy flavour – chocolate and vanilla – because they’d been refrigerated their choux shells had gone soggy. That’s a shame and something the back of house may want to address.

Moving on to the tarts though, they were delicious. The chocolate tart was a dark ganache poured into a shortcrust shell and topped with dehydrated orange and raspberry. Silky, creamy and not too sweet. The lemon curd tart had a buttery citrus zing that any CWA lady would be happy to put her name to.

An important part of a high tea are the scones. These ones were quite crumbly, but that didn’t worry me, I had plenty of jam and cream to stick it back together again. WIN!

All in all, if you’re after a cutting edge pastry chef doing weird and wonderful things, this isn’t the high tea for you. But, if you’re after a more traditional menu done well, head up to level 4 at the Australian Museum, bring your nan, she’ll love it too!

Price: $35 per person / $28 per member

Sittings: 10am – 11.30am or 2pm – 3.30pm

Bookings advisable.

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1 William St
Sydney 2000
+61 2 9320 6391

Mon – Sun: 10am – 4.30pm

https://www.createconsultants.com.au/no-1-william
https://www.facebook.com/No.1William/