Dilmah Real High Tea Challenge Cafes & Restaurants 2015

I never felt so excited like this before in my whole life. I’m going to review these two places which participate in Dilmah Real High Tea Challenge Cafes & Restaurants 2015. Before the challenge happened, Dilmah gathered some Bandung food bloggers and competitors at Luxton Hotel on August 13^th. Some of the bloggers are very popular and made me so nervous at the moment. But I’m grateful for being there.

Basically, Dilmah challenges these Cafés and Restaurants. They should be making some dish which makes of or contains their product, in this case is tea. In judging process, competitors have to brew the hot teas in front of judges. They will make two different drinks and must be paired with either a sweet or savory dish. It could be hot, warm or cold.

And for tea inspired cuisine, competitors have to make 1 sweet or savory dish which made from tea as an ingredient. It makes me feel so glad because I learn about it before at the food ingredients class in the college. I can add more knowledge in real life, not just theory.

I got the opportunity to visit Porto Restaurant and Chubby Bunny. There were 8 restaurants and cafes which take part in this challenge. I can’t visit all the places because it’s hard for me to match my school schedule. I visited both of them on September 12^th.

Porto World Culinary Adventure

Their concept is so mature. I honestly adore it. They showed us their dishes, three different unforgettable phases in life; birth, marriage, and elder life.

The dish that represents ‘birth’ is Cocotte De Saumon. That is egg in the birth nest, simply the best resemble of early stage of life. It’s served with egg shell that filled salmon tartar, crispy croutons, dried radish sprout, melted quail egg and caviar. It paired perfectly with lapsang souchong tea. I’m not going to lie. It tasted really good! I’ve ever tried lapsang souchong tea before and it felt nice when I ate it at the same time with Cocotte De Saumon.

Cocotte De Saumon

And for the dish that represents ‘marriage’ there was Almond Lava Cake that paired with Pepper Mint Hopper. That is an elegant taste of cold pepper mint tea crème with light cacao liqueur. The dish concept is combined loves, blissful life and eternity there are wedding & next stage of early life. Sweetness and bitter of the Belgium dark chocolate showed the challenge of a married life. It’s too beautiful to eat. I love the way Chef killed it!

Almond Lava Cake with Pepper Mint Hopper

The last dish is Cod Imperika, it represents ‘elder life’ which we are just sitting on our old rocking chair and thinking about good memories. There will be no regrets because we already done our best. It’s so calm and relaxing I guess. Cod Imperika is grilled black cod that served on top of grilled baguette, fresh arugula, crème of jasmine and garnish with black caviar.

I’m a fish lover and obviously this is my most favorite dish. Jasmine in the crème tasted really strong in a good way. It balanced everything. Huge plus!

Chubby Bunny Bandung

They gave a very cute theme for Dilmah Real High Tea Challenge. It is inspired by Alice in Wonderland movie which is my all times favorite movie. The dishes they served can represent the forest tea party on the movie perfectly. They called some of their dishes with character names on the movie as well. Here they are…

The Mad Hatter Pure Brilliant Breakfast with Tarte Passion Berries a la White Queen. A very long name right?! It’s basically a cute little dessert with fresh fruit on top, they gave me strawberry and some little flower petal on top.

When we ate those in the same time, what I felt is so great. It became very sweet and made the sour feeling from the strawberry gone. Nice pairing!

The Mad Hatter Pure Brilliant Breakfast with Tarte Passion Berries a la White Queen

Second dish is Red Queen’s Fresh Citrus Jasmine Green Tea with Open Face Caterpillar Chicken Weelington. They are perfect combination for me, the drink made from jasmine green tea from Dilmah and some orange peel. It smelled really nice, refreshing and relaxing. But we can still tasted jasmine flavor from the tea.

The base of Open Face Caterpillar Chicken Weelington is puff pastry filling with creamy and yummy chicken weelington on top. Little diced bell pepper added some color. But it’s kind of hard for me to find perfect picture when they are served together, that’s why I took extra picture of this one. They are still pretty though. I like them.

And the last dish, always be my favorite one from Chubby Bunny Bandung. It called Chubby Bunny Green Tea Jasmine Mousse. The cutest dessert ever! That’s typical layered dessert and they served it with nice glass. From the bottom, there is mango gel and jasmine mousse. Crunchy things on top are made of hard flour, butter, cinnamon powder and brown sugar blended. Cute little flowers on top are nasturtium flower and dianthus flower. Not enough words to explain the dish.

Chubby Bunny Green Tea Jasmine Mousse

About Dilmah Real High Tea Challenge

Every time I visit 4 or 5 stars hotel, either for daily working or actual visiting the hotel. I saw that they are using Dilmah Tea to serve the visitor. It’s enough to prove Dilmah Tea has a good quality and being most people favorite.

Dilmah, a tea company started to organized Dilmah Real High Tea Challenge “RHTC” on 2007. At that time, Merril J. Fernando, Dilmah founder, thought that High Tea time isn’t be how it should be. They lost their originality, creativity and the connectivity with the tea itself.

To make it back, Dilmah started a journey. Dilmah reintroduce it to the new generation with interesting way. In Indonesia, cafés and restaurants grew very fast. Café and restaurant become place where we can have a quality time with friends or family. High tea time usually serve between 3 PM to 6 PM. We can call it afternoon tea party.

Dilmah Real High Tea Challenge Cafes and Restaurants, the most challenging competition to serve afternoon tea for Café and Restaurant especially this year in Bandung and Jakarta, collaborated with PT. David Roy Indonesia. This event is already done in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Singapore and United Arab Emirates. And for the first time,  Dilmah Real High Tea Challenge Cafes and Restaurant will be held in Bandung and Jakarta this year.

Real High Tea Challenge is opened to all professional culinary. They will combine the tea with local food and show up gastronomy art, it also give people inspiration to use tea as ingredient in food and beverage industry.

The judges for this challenge are Mrs. Eliawati Erly as Brand Ambassador Indonesia and Nanda Hamdalah as a Celebrity Chef.

Winner of this competition will get Rp. 5.000.000,-, special Samovar Design, Dilmah product and accessories, and also certificate. Their creation also will be promoted and will on ‘Real High Tea book recipe’, it will be available worldwide.

There was three challenge items :

·        Hot Tea Pairing Dish (Sweet or Savory)

·        Mocktail or Cocktail pairing (Sweet or Savory)

·        Tea Inspire Cuisine (Food with Ingredients Tea)

Competitor must promote all items for 2 weeks from when it start in their Café/Restaurant.