High Tea at Gunners Barracks, Georges Heights, Sydney

Set in Georges Heights near Mosman, the Gunners Barracks is a wonderful spot for special occasions, and having been there previously for a hens' party, I was really looking forward to some superb service and tasty lunch.

First off, I really liked the set up on the table when we got there. Little China cups on their saucers, all laid out on a white table cloth. This is what I always think of when I head out for high tea. It certainly has evolved quite a bit at plenty of places, so it's nice to see all the little flowers and fragile cups once in a while.

The Gunner's Barracks is part of the same company as the Tea Room in the QVB here in Sydney, and the setup is similar at both places. The one thing that I wasn't all that keen on at the table was the metal teapot, which was quite hot, and made pouring tea tricky!

We worked our way through the savoury bits, including salmon and cream cheese, roast beef and egg ribbon sandwiches.

We then moved on to the quiches and little curry puffs before giving the scones a go. I will be honest and said that the scones were definitely not the best. Aside from being way too big, it was also a little salty and quite frankly, not very appetising.

My favourite part of the sweets was this little mousse/jelly thing with little lychee (I think) balls on the top. The rest of the sweets were pretty tasty, but that was the most outstanding!

We were running about 15 minutes late and when we got there, we were told that we had to vacate our table at 1.30, which was fine, as it was out fault that we were tardy. However, despite rushing us, it took them another 20 minutes to get the food out, and they also forgot the honey for my tea. The scenery was great, even though it was pouring rain.

Aside from the unappealing scones and the very rushed and not great service (you could tell they were swamped and there was a high turnover of people that day just by the way they were running around the place), it was a nice way to spend an hour.

Overall, on the scale of 1 to 10, I'd rate it:

7/10