It’s spooky season and Vancouver’s only, supposedly haunted castle has a few offerings to tickle your taste buds and peak your curiosities.
Their popular interactive mystery with cocktails, Castle Confidential has returned on October 22 and 23 on the hotel’s 14th Floor Heritage Suites. This event promises to taps into your sense of adventure and basically allows ticket holders to take a look at premium luxury rooms that you might not otherwise get too. This has long been on my bucket list, ever since I got a teaser taste of it, solving one of the mysteries in one of their estate rooms when they first launched. So I am so excited to be able to attend this year in full. You will have to come back for that review.
But today we were here for the return of Fairmont Vancouver’s haunted tea. “Guests can descend into indulgence with Haunted Cellar Afternoon Tea, a spellbinding twist on Fairmont Hotel Vancouver’s signature tea service. Blending the timeless elegance of afternoon tea with gothic touches and witchy charm, the experience features a collection of hauntingly creative savoury bites and decadent sweets.” (Whimsically taken from the press release).
The service is available September 25 – October 18, Thursdays at 11:00 a.m. or 1:00 p.m., and Fridays through Sundays at 11:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m. or 3:00 p.m. (also available Thanksgiving Monday, October 12); October 21 – November 1, Wednesdays through Sundays at 11:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m. or 3:00 p.m. The price is $75 per adult and $40 per child. Reservations are highly recommended and can be done online.
The room is themed to witches with black skulls, cauldrons, potions, and books that look like they would hold spells. Plus pointed witches hats strung up and dangling from the ceiling. But these witches are fun, being depicted in photos smiling, playing games, and surfing. The room’s wall to wall shelves are decorated with such curiosities inciting wonder.
As usual your tea service begins with drinks. You choose your desired pot of tea from familiar classics or seasonal flavours like pumpkin spice, masala chai, maple peach, and/or cranberry echinacea. Looking for tea without the caffeine I went for apple ginger roobios with rich, spicy sweet notes of ginger, soft apple, and mellow herbaceous tones.
You can puncture your high tea service with an order of cocktails. Each one with a whimsical name be fitting of the theme, which also aligns with each individual bite to come.
We had the Pumpkin Spice Resurrection, which is essentially a pumpkin scented old-fashioned meets espresso cocktail. Elyx, Kahlúa, espresso and pumpkin spice, layered with chocolate bitters and finished with whipped cream and cinnamon. This is more like dessert than a drink. You get very faint pumpkin and a lot more syrup caramel in the mouth.
A Fairmont high tea set is not complete without their trademark, classic buttermilk scone, the seasonal flavour was an orange cinnamon both served with mascarpone tea cream and an apple strawberry jam. For many of us, two of these is enough to satisfy. There are soft, buttery, and crumbly in all the right ways.
Moving onto the savoury tier, The Book of Shadows is their roast beef tea sandwich with horseradish, caramelized onion, and gruyére on rye. Each bite was creamy and sweet with the onion, accenting the generous folds of fatty beef.
Hocus Pocus was what they are calling their classic smoke salmon and cream cheese combo. Served in a croissant along side fall apple, pumpkin seeds, and boursin cheese. There was just a little too much cheese spread for my taste, and I found it a touch salty. However, nothing that a big gulp of tea or cocktail couldn’t rectify.
The Halloweenie it was a fun name for their sausage roll, and honestly, the only one that made absolute sense. This was a hotdog, rolled up in dough and flavoured with a Housemade beet ketchup. It was a little on the dry side, so I could have used more of the ketchup or to have some on the side for dipping into. I got more curry notes from it than the traditional tomato tang.
The Sleep Hollow Tart reminded me of thanksgiving and stuffing with its kabocha squash filling with vadouvan, compressed apple, walnut, and sage. This was savoury with all the warm fall herbs.
The Pumpkin Patch was a pumpkin croquette that we debated whether it looked more like a pimple to pop or a single breast. It was a deep fried ball of creamy pumpkin filling topped with a round of smoked brie and a dollop of cranberry gel. I found this sweet with the fall gourd and wished for more of the cheese and cranberry to flavour.
For our sweets tier we had the Sorcerer’s Cauldron which was a chocolate choux, raspberry mousse, and berry pearls. It looked like the Bon Bon was the cauldron with the red pearls the bubbles spilling out of it. This was a lush bite for the dark and rich chocolate lovers.
The Moon Over The Castle was a dark chocolate tart shell filled with blood orange crémeux, cassis gel, and gold flakes. The moon was a chocolate circle that stuck out within the lip puckering centre.
The Black Widow was my favourite. It was black sesame shortbread cookie with a milk chocolate truffle centre. The black sesame was so fragrant within this.
The Magic Amulet was represented by a gold flake crusted, torched fig sitting on top of a fig compote and honey mousse walnut dacquoe. It was sweet with the compote layer and I thought all this might have been better on top of a cheesecake instead, which I originally thought this was.
And the Night Owl was a blackberry earl grey macaron, but I got more sweet cassis and only a faint tea essence. Overall a little too sweet for me.
In closing I always look forward to any season and/or holiday, knowing that Fairmont Vancouver has the best way to celebrate with their unique tea services or events, such as this.
Notch 8
900 W Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC V6C 2W6
(604) 662-1900
fairmont-hotel-vancouver.com
