HK’s Best High Tea Series: Harbourview Panda + Mira Spring High Teas

Saying hello again to HK with a panda and a spring blossom high tea.

Our experience

We have big news, dessert followers!! We have moved…again!! To HK!! We haven’t been back in ten years – since 2015, and with the greatest honesty, it’s pretty much the same, and somewhat better in fact. The drunk American/British crowds that used to swarm the Central area are no longer around, it feels infinitely safer at night as a consequence, there’s a host of sparkling new shopping and eating areas especially in the Kowloon side, places seem a little cleaner, the weather is still atrociously humid, you can now get to the mainland in under 30 mins with the high speed rail…and it’s high tea galore everywhereeeeee 😀 As part of an ongoing “Hong Kong Best High Tea Series“, we promise to eat our way around HK’s best high teas, weeding out the fabulous from the soporific, and hunting down those that feature local flavours and which highlight the city’s and region’s finest dessert creativity. Here’s the first page of an exciting new chapter! 🙂

Panda High Tea

Dessert destination: Harbourview Hotel, 4 Harbour Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong.
Budget: $$-$$$ (HKD $248 pp + service tax; approx USD $30 pp).
Local flavours featured: Yes.
Best for: Family-friendly high tea.
Short and sweet story: Set towards the harbourfront in Wanchai, you will find the Harbourview Hotel, and it offers a family-friendly high tea experience. This means you don’t need to dress-up at all – hello stretchy pants 😀 On our visit, Harbourview’s afternoon tea was served on a traditional Chinese teak stand. The tea menu itself was short and not a highlight. It was also served in teabags, rather than loose leaf tea . Savouries included a shrimp cake with bamboo shoots, salmon cream cheese roll, and a egg yolk lava bun shaped into panda form. Rather, the sweet selection was the main highlight of Harbourview’s afternoon tea, eliciting “it’s soooo cute” exclamations. This part of the high tea included a coconut mousse cake with embedded mochi and a matcha red bean roll cake, both with an adorable squishy marshmallow panda sitting on top. There were two other colourful sweet items without the panda theme – a strawberry cheesecake and an orange passionfruit moussecake.

Spring Blossom High Tea

Dessert destination: Coco @ The Mira Hotel, 118 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.
Budget: $$-$$$ (HKD $568 pp + service tax; approx USD $40 pp).
Local flavours featured: Yes.
Best for: Exquisite dessert artistry.
Short and sweet story: Of all the food we ate in HK when we were last based here a decade ago, the Mira’s Christmas Buffet was the most unforgettable. Fast forward ten years, and that extravagance so characteristic of HK living is still reflected in the Mira’s food offering. On our visit, Mira’s high tea arrived on a tall gold spiralling staircase display that left us utterly starstruck. By contrast to many high teas, the savouries were at the Mira as well thought-out as the desserts, with luxurious touches such as caviar and foie gras intermingling with a Japanese-inflected savoury base of salmon mousse mille feuille, unagi maki rolls, milk toast, and fruit cream sandwiches. In additional to delicately-infused rose petal scones, the desserts were in particular, something to write home about — the prettiest flower-shaped tarts filled with sakura cream and strawberry confit; a cream puff injected with elderflower cream and berry compote; an almond cake layered with oolong tea cream and peach jelly; and another butterfly-embellished creation with lychee coulis and jasmine tea ganache.