Looking for afternoon tea? The afternoon tea at Hatch restaurant in Hurstville features a range of hot and cold savouries, cakes and unlimited tea. Come and find out what it is like and whether it is worth going to!
It has been a while between afternoon teas and when Sophia suggested the afternoon tea at Hatch in Hurstville for a catch up with Janice I was really looking forward to it. Hatch is a restaurant in Humphreys Hotel, just off the main shopping street of Hurstville. Afternoon tea there is $79 per person (which seems like the average price of afternoon tea nowadays. I remember when they were $35 a person - have I become that person?). The Hatch afternoon tea is only on Sundays between 2-4pm and you are advised to pre-book where you have to leave a credit card deposit.
For the afternoon tea, there are also some drink upgrades available. For $85 a person you can start your afternoon tea with a Mimosa cocktail. $105 per person gets you 2 Hours of bottomless mimosas, sparkling, white or red wines and $110 gets you the Champagne Reception aka a glass of Pol Roger on arrival. None of us are big drinkers so we go with just the afternoon tea. We are sitting outside on the covered balcony on a day where the weather alternates between sunny and rainy every 30 minutes but there are heaters above to keep us warm.
The tea comes out and I choose the sticky chai while Sophia has the Vietnam high mountain oolong tea and Janice has the English breakfast tea. They all come in enormous teapots with the milk of your choice for Janice and I.
After the requisite photos and videos are taken, we start eating. The first thing we notice is that nothing is the same as what features on the menu apart from the scone. We're not mad though because what we have is delicious. I've been to Hatch before for dinner and I think because it is a very good restaurant, the quality of the afternoon tea food is actually very good.
I start with the beef slider that comes on a soft bun with a beef patty with sauces. Then I segue onto the smoked salmon tart with a thin tart shell and a lemon cream underneath a generous amount of smoked salmon. These tarts are big - no dainty little tarts here and I think if I had waited longer, the thin pastry shell would have perhaps fallen apart with the moisture of the cream so I recommend eating this first.
Another favourite is the half crumpet topped with egg salad which is a clever take on an egg salad sandwich. However my favourite savoury item is the croquette with a slice of zucchini pickle on top and filled with soft beef cheek (since nothing matched on the menu I'm purely guessing). This is enormous and absolutely delicious and the pickle and sauce give the rich beef a good balance.
None of us are real sweets people but we give them all a try. Most of the sweets, like the savouries, come in generous sizes. The tiramisu puff is a large choux craquelin with a coffee and chocolate flavour. The bannoffee cake is a sizeable cake with fresh banana, cream and sponge cake covered in a toffee caramel. There's also a small chocolate ganache tart and a fruit tart with lemon cream and sliced, fresh grapes on top. The serving of scone with sweetened chantilly cream and jam is novel but there isn't quite enough jam for it, although it looks cute. There are also some delicious rich chocolate brownies studded with chocolate chips.
Before we know it, it's 4pm. They've offered to refill our teapots but we haven't even made a small dent in the enormous teapots. We take our time on this leisurely Sunday afternoon looking for a break in the rain.
So tell me Dear Reader, do you usually get the drink upgrades for afternoon tea?
This afternoon tea was independently paid for.
Hatch
Level 1 Humphreys Hotel, 288 Forest Road Hurstville, NSW 2220
Hatch High Tea on Sundays from 2-4pm
Phone: (02) 9807 7333
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