Empire Hotel and Country Club – Improved High Tea Commended

Having spent just short of four years in Brunei, we have been to the Empire Hotel and Country Club a number of times. This self-proclaimed 6-star hotel may not quite be 6-stars in quite a few people’s opinion but it is certainly a hotel that does things BIG and has lovely grounds.

Everything in the hotel is a bit OTT and it is a fun place to go to for an afternoon out and is always popular with visitors. And whenever we do have visitors to Brunei, this is on the to do list – usually for the weekend high-tea followed by a walk round the grounds.

Unfortunately though, the last few occasions we have gone for high tea it has been well below standard (eg. coffee taking 45 minutes to arrive) and was topped off by uncooked BBQ chicken being served the last time we visited. Because of these disappointing experiences we had not been for quite sometime, until today.

We thought it would be a nice way to celebrate a birthday so made a booking to go there this afternoon and we are pleased we did. The set up is slightly different. The weekend high-tea has always been a buffet (as opposed to a 3-tiered cake stand of nibbles on weekdays) but unlike previously, where a large table in the centre of the lounge held all the buffet food, the food this time was placed on individual small tables and scattered round the central area of the lounge. It looked good. The food spread was also good and unlike previous visits, the quality of the food was excellent.

All in all it made for an excellent afternoon out for a celebration and High Tea at The Empire Hotel is back on our ‘ recommended list’.

More pictures now that I am back from holiday: