Fairmont Vancouver, Lunar New Year high tea

Today, on its second day launch, we were invited down to Notch 8’s hidden room for their latest high tea experience. In celebration of Lunar New Year you can enjoy their year of the snake high tea from now until February 23rd, 2025.

The room is robust with white and pink cherry blossoms and the glow of red and gold Chinese lanterns. During our visit we were told they might add more Chinese decor pieces within the shelves to better fill them out. Overall, this was a classier and more inclusive take than last year’s collection of stereotypical Chinese ornamental vases, fans, and the abundance of dragons.

Each seat was preset with Fairmont Empress tea cups, plates, and the necessary cutlery. The pop up menu features art from
local artist Nicole Larsen of Ripple & Rise. A custom Year of the Snake tea illustration that resembles a tarot card with swiggling snakes, steaming tea, and lucky blossoms.

A large version of it is also blown up and used as wall art, making it the perfect backdrop for a photo op.

With this experience Fairmont Vancouver has also teamed up with the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation and is featuring their Gold Mountain tea on this limited time only menu. The Gold Mountain tea is blended exclusively for the Chinatown Storytelling Centre by Tealeaves, both of which are located in Vancouver, BC.

For those unfamiliar, “The Chinatown Storytelling Centre is a key initiative of the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation’s cultural revitalization efforts. It is Canada’s first permanent space dedicated to sharing the rich history and living heritage of Vancouver’s Chinatown. Featuring stories from Chinese Canadians of diverse backgrounds, it celebrates resilience, history, and fosters dialogue and new ideas”. (As taken from the menu).

Gold Mountain Tea is a blend of jasmine and earl grey, furthering their East meets West theme, well representing the story they like to tell. Its name is the same given to Vancouver’s mountains in celebrating the unity of Vancouver and the Chinese. It is notable as having lots of citrus notes for a dark tea.

This is available on the tea menu, along with all the hotel’s other classic and popular teas like English Breakfast, Lemon Rooibos, and Lavender Earl Grey.

Other Chinese teas available on this menu includes an Oolong Goji Berry, which is a balance of sweet and tart goji berries infused with floral notes of oolong. The 3 year old Pu-erh Special with toasted bready and earthy notes. And the Lychee Congou, which is a leafy black tea infused with the flavour of exotic lychee fruit.

For those looking for something more spirited they also have three limited edition cocktails to celebrate the occasion, and one too features Gold Mountain Tea.

The Lychee Rose Spritz is the lightest of all the offerings. It features Empress’s rose gin with aperol, lychee juice, dragon fruit syrup, and tonic. A purfumey option bursting with sweet florals that leaves you with a lingering fruitiness on the palate.

The Golden Tes Shouchu Sour is barley shochu, gold mountain tea, melon liqueur, egg white, and a ball of cantaloupe. For those unfamiliar, shochu is similar to sake, with the same ingredients. However, it is not fermented like wine, but rather distilled like spirits. The result is less umami and more citrus notes. I got matcha qualities from this, outside of the top dusting. A thick on the lips chalky cocktail with the brightness of the melon and yuzu livening things up. This was the strongest of the three.

The Spiced Persimmon caught my eye, you don’t often read persimmon on a menu, let alone have it featured in a cocktail. Maker’s mark bourbon, lemon, orange juice, egg white, and cinnamon. The fruit is the highlighted and made warm with winter spices for a syrupy sipper.

The tea service itself is presented a layered wooden basket, instead of the usual tea tower. Still three tiers to separate savoury, sweet, and scones, but having it stack3: adds to the experience by having you peeling back the layers, figuratively and literally.

The following are notes of each bite, in the order we ate them in, from savoury to sweet, with the scones in between.

The Gravlax Cured in Char Siu Sauce was a clever merger of the commonly seen smoked salmon in high tea and the iconic sweet glaze of the wildly popular “red” bbq pork. To it they add shaved red onion and citrus crème fraiche for a light start and an easy one bite. I didn’t expect so much flavour from this. The sweet and savoury sauce overrides the pronounced flavour of salmon. A little over sauced, but balanced by the spice from crisp onion.

The Roasted Duck Tart with hoisin and apricot duck sauce gave you the full profile of bbq duck, without the actual fibrous meat. Salty and creamy like dessert, the whipped topping was an unexpected vehicle for this flavour combination.

The Jammy Tea Egg with chilli crunch and crispy noodle was meaty, and included a good amount of heated spice. It ate more filling than expected and tasted like it came with a bowl of brothy noodles.

I have never had a Curry Puff with mushroom keema before. This was a great merger of uami mushroom and sweet coconut curry, brought together in a flaky soft pastry shell. I could have popped five of these into my mouth.

The Shrimp Toast, dressed in a sesame and soy aioli, and topped generously with raw green onions was the room’s favourite. The classic tea sandwich given an exciting Asian bouquet. The shrimp mix had a light and floral sweet cream character that matched the bounciness of the bread, with the greens adding a spicy freshness.

The Classic Buttermilk Scone was crumbly and dense. Served with a tea cream and citrus preserve that added some needed moisture.

I was most excited to see the Scallion Scone, a popular ingredient in Asian breads, cleverly incorporated into this new platform. Although I could have used more green onion in the mix, to really grasp its fragrance. Like this it was muted and softened, and some how a bite of it reminded me of corn bread.

Dessert was an equally exciting adventure starting with the Brûlée Egg Tart. The classic sweet and eggy tart with a pudding centre and buttery crust, is given an extra hit of sugar with a torch. Although it did not crack apart like traditional creme brûlée.

By comparison to everything else the Walnut Cookie with milk chocolate pearls was the least enticing. The cookie itself served as a lack lustre base for the apricot gel centre that I wanted more of, to fully coat and flavour. The pink chocolate balls were a nice surprise, adding a satisfying crisp and crunch to bites.

The Mango & Coconut Cake is a coconut dacquoise with mango jelly. It was the sweetest of the lot, leaning more towards coconut mousse than mango cake.

The Five-Spice Chocolate Cake with ginger cream was stunning, painting a metallic gold sheen against its dark cocoa exterior this garnered my attention. The cake was warming with the five spice, which added hints of savouriness to balance out all the rich and bitter dark chocolate.

The Lychee Almond Tart didn’t come across as the fragrant fruit, but more nutty from the almond. Topped with chantilly cream and gold flakes it was as delicate in appearance as its flavour.

In conclusion, this was a great way to enjoy the festivities and flavours of the season. Yet another fantastic themed high tea from the luxury property in partnership with local Vancouver businesses. To add more to this experience, you can enter their online social media contest giveaway, where you can win a day in Chinatown including trips to the Chinatown Story Telling Centre and Sun Yet Seng Garden, followed by a meal at the iconic Chinatown BBQ.

Fairmont Vancouver will be further celebrating Lunar New Year with a traditional Lion Dance and tea and chocolate Popup on January 29th, 2025. This event will be open to the public.

Notch 8
900 W Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC V6C 2W6
(604) 662-1900
fairmont-hotel-vancouver.com