Crossroads Bar, Swissotel, Sydney - High Tea

Crossroads Bar is located on the 8th floor lobby of Swissotel, Sydney on Market Street.

This bar is your traditional hotel bar with a modern twist.  It has a very cosy set up with plush leather sofas in pods or in an open setting. The lighting brought a luxurious feel to the whole environment. There was live piano in the background too.

I visited Crossroads Bar together with a girl friend one Saturday afternoon for their Apple-Themed Buffet High Tea. 

Booking:

We tried booking a place 2 days before we intended to meet initially. But as the place was booked out, we had to reschedule to meet a week later. I suggest booking as early as possible to avoid disappointments.

Drinks:
We were first served with a cocktail. The wait staff explained it as an apple pie cocktail. It was quite a mild drink, but very refreshing. I'm still not sure what exactly was in the drink! It doesn't seem very alcoholic.

Next, they gave us a pot of English Breakfast T2 tea to share. Interesting cast iron pot, but pretty heavy to tip.

Food:

Food was served buffet style. There was a wide variety of apple desserts and a chocolate fondue. Amongst them there were very yummy apple pannacotta served in tiny tubes, light apple macarons, apple crumble and very moist apple and poppyseed scones.

For the savory side, there was smoked salmon and chive cream roulade, meat pies, deviled eggs, and turkey and cranberry pumpernickel.

Service

Service at this place was scarce not because there were not enough wait staff, but the wait staff seem to be hiding behind the counter and not being attentive to the needs of patrons.

Staff also were quite contradictory of what was served in the High Tea package. One said there were refills on tea while another said they did not do so.

We also could not understand why we received 1 pot of tea to share between 2 people while others received 1 pot of tea per person - which couldn't be refilled. There was really no consistency with service. 

The wait staff also didn't bring milk and sugar when serving tea. It just seemed lacking of common sense.

I would suggest that they should serve tea with the tea leaves in a strainer in the pot so that they could easily refill the pot with hot water.

I would say overall, the service was very substandard for the venue.

Price

Original price for this buffet was $59 per person. We bought a Groupon for $75 for 2 people. 

Overall

The buffet spread was pretty good in terms of variety and quality. This place could definitely be improved with better service. Price wise, $59 per person is pretty hefty. I'm glad we visited here on a Groupon.