Cafe Culture

It's lovely when prospective clients invite me out to some place new. It's even lovelier when they spring for my eats! Truly, that's a client worth keeping, even if the venue lacks a little something.

Cute venue, but the baroque music nearly drove me bonkers.

 Cafe Vienna on the third floor of KLCC, at the Ampang Mall section of the building, boasts about serving the best of Austrian and German favourites. However, with us rolling in at 3.30pm, a plate of cabbage rolls or schnitzel would have been a little hard to take.

The High Tea platter

Hence I ordered the High Tea at RM38+ for two persons. The tea itself was boring. Lipton. Ho-hum. Hardly Austrian or German! And the dinky piece of quasi-shortbread fell a lot short of butter.

Like, lose the baguette already!

The savouries in the High Tea set consisted of ham and cheese on dried out baguette, with the sliced Cheddar showing tell-tale signs of discolouration at the edges. The egg mayo was moist and passably fresh, and I liked the bits of pickle diced into the mix. However the proportions were wrong, resulting in more tart relish than creamy egg at the end. The smoked salmon and capers was decent enough, but let down again by the stone age baguette.

The cakes were decent.

The sweeties were much better. There were two slices each of Opera cake (creamy, but a tad salty since they evidently did not use unsalted butter for the mix) and Choc Nut (very fudgey and dense), but only a piece of the Lemon Cheese, which was pretty good, being fluffy and perfectly balanced in flavour.

There should be a penalty for serving scones with no cream!

I had to ask quite a few times before the possibly Myanmar server understood I could not possibly have my small scones with no butter or jam. The two pats of Lurpak and one dinky square of Fruit Force strawberry jam which finally came was a disgrace, considering the menu promised fresh strawberry preserve.

The fruit tarts with tired-looking strawberries were so-so, if one was to go by the half-hearted picking of my clients, who also claimed the Viennese coffee tasted 'not so right'.

So, verdict. Would I go again? Sure I would. If my clients are paying!