Lobby Lounge - Shangri-La Hotel Sydney

Went to the lobby lounge for some desserts and coffee. Desserts are reasonably priced at $6.50 each. Coffees were expensive and they were also $6.50. We bought a firecracker ($25) to take away and that was a lot of fun to light. Service was polite and non-obtrusive. They also had a man playing the piano - very nice and relaxing environment.

The seating is comfortable an the service pleasant. HighTea looks nice, some fancy sandwiches, the crab and eggplant one was delicious, 4 pieces sweets (a tad too sweet for my liking, but nice flavors and presentation). Scones were ok... i think the scones were fluffier and nicer at the hyatt. And i prefer scones served warm to hot. But these ones were room temperature, and the cream was just whipped and not a smooth thick king island style which i prefer. A good selection of teas.

“Festive” high tea in the Lobby Lounge They must be joking with this. There was nothing redeemable about this experience. Here is a rundown of what $55 per head gets you: First up – the ambience. The Lobby Lounge is rather shabby and disorganised. You sit on faded couches that don’t quite reach the table or are at the appropriate height. The spacing of tables is good but it’s impractical for eating and drinking. Also, there was some dishevelled person sitting near us working on a computer for some reason. Then the service. It can best be described as shambolic. No one checked on us or asked how things were going. The only attention we got was trying to sell us more bottles of champagne (at $160 a bottle – well over double normal retail). It took almost 45 mins to get the high tea trays. When they did come, they came out one at a time with about 5 mins gap in between. I am a vegetarian so had a different tray to others. They brought out my tray and I thought it looked like a generous serve. A few minutes later, a waiter comes back and says “this was for 2 people” and takes the tray AWAY from the table and brings it back with only one serve of everything. Come on, even at Maccas, once it’s on the table, just leave it there. Then about 1h15mins in, we still hadn’t even been offered tea. One of the people with me remarked “gee it’d be nice to have some tea with our high tea”. Once we had finished eating, we managed to flag down someone to order tea…it was just tea bag tea (not even proper brewed tea) and pretty average tea at that. And, the food…it was the worst food I have ever been served. The food on the plane trip to Sydney was a marked improvement on what I got here. All the bread on the sandwiches was stale and the fillings uniformly tasted like cheap margarine (if I wanted a sandwich made from Helgas – which is what they were using in the kitchen – I could just go home). Another diner felt extremely ill after eating the prawn sandwich. The scone was as heavy as a rock and wasn’t even served with proper clotted cream. There was a savoury tart on there with soggy pastry and caramelised onion that was so sweet it was inedible. And then the cakes – aside from looking no more special than anything you can get in any corner bakery/deli these days, they tasted awful. They were all either too sweet or bitter. No one at the table finished any of them. Oh and the only “festive” element (which added money to the per head cost) was a tacky Christmas tree decoration on the table upon arrival with some chocolates and a few overcooked gingerbread men. These then had to be removed anyway to make room for the trays. We were gobsmacked at how awful this was and that any place would serve food this poor (let alone a place of this calibre charging this amount of money). Then, to cap it off, they took forever with the billing and didn’t even ask how anything was. Seriously, you should be ashamed of yourselves. That was an absolute joke. If we weren’t there for a birthday celebration, I would have walked out.

“Festive” high tea in the Lobby Lounge They must be joking with this. There was nothing redeemable about this experience. Here is a rundown of what $55 per head gets you: First up – the ambience. The Lobby Lounge is rather shabby and disorganised. You sit on faded couches that don’t quite reach the table or are at the appropriate height. The spacing of tables is good but it’s impractical for eating and drinking. Also, there was some dishevelled person sitting near us working on a computer for some reason. Then the service. It can best be described as shambolic. No one checked on us or asked how things were going. The only attention we got was trying to sell us more bottles of champagne (at $160 a bottle – well over double normal retail). It took almost 45 mins to get the high tea trays. When they did come, they came out one at a time with about 5 mins gap in between. I am a vegetarian so had a different tray to others. They brought out my tray... read more

I visited this lounge to experience the Anna Polyviou high tea and it was absolutely impeccable. I loved all the elements of the high tea and the desserts did not disappoint at all. The customer service is of a high calibre here and you will definitely not leave hungry.