InterContinental The Rialto: High Coffee

Intercontinental

Disclosure: I attended courtesy of InterContinental The Rialto and Run Forrest.

I’m sure there are Melburnians out there who don’t like coffee.

Not that I know of very many. They are a rare breed.

So it’s a surprise that no one else has done this yet. Instead of having a normal afternoon/high tea – replace the tea with coffee. Brilliant. High Coffee was born.

I was invited to experience it a couple of weeks ago and trotted along to the InterContinental Rialto one Sunday afternoon with Alastair.


Espresso martini

High Coffee is available daily from 2pm-5pm in the Market Lane Bar for $55 per person and starts with an espresso martini.

Tier Intercontinental Rialto

The food at High Coffee contains afternoon sandwiches, warm savouries, scones and sweets.

Cold savouries

We were instructed to eat the sandwiches first:

  • Waygu beef, cucumber relish and watercress panini
  • Roasted chicken and avocado roll with bush tomato relish roll
  • Smoked salmon on rye with mascarpone and lemon myrtle

  • Sangas

    No dried out bread on this plate. They were all interesting little morsels.

    After the sandwiches are eaten, the plate was taken away and warm savouries were brought out.

    Warm savouries

    The warm savouries plate:

  • Mini beef and burgundy pie
  • Prosciutto and green asparagus quiche
  • Feta and olive mini muffin

  • Warn savouries

    My favourite item was probably the little pie – it had a nice pastry and a good savoury beef filling for such a itty bitty thing. The quiche was also pretty good though I did find the mini muffin on the sweet side, which seemed a bit odd for feta and olive.

    Scones

    There were two types of scones – mini fruit and plain ones, served with double cream and strawberry jam. They were all tucked into their napkin to keep warm (cute). I was surprised at how good they were considering the mini size.

    Coffee

    Before moving on to the sweets, a cafe Freddo (iced coffee) was served. I also had a long black during the afternoon. (And yes, combined with the coffee I had consumed in the morning, I was buzzing a bit by the end of it!)

    Sweets

    And finally, on to sweets:

  • Vanilla and raspberry panna cotta
  • Couveture chocolate and macadamia nut slice with Chantilly cream
  • Pistachio macaron
  • Mini pavlova with seasonal fruits


  • Our favourite thing was the vanilla and raspberry panna cotta – nicely smooth and not too sweet. I also enjoyed the mini chocolate nut slice and the macaron, but we both found the pavlova a bit sugary for us.

    Raspberry sorbet

    We finished with a scoop of raspberry sorbet and (buzzily) rolled our way out of there.

    If you’re looking for a twist on a regular afternoon tea, then High Coffee is for you. It’s enjoyable and reasonably priced – particularly since it’s the same price for weekdays and weekends. There should be enough caffeine, food and sugar to satisfy most people. 🙂


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    Market Lane Bar
    Intercontinental Melbourne The Rialto
    495 Collins Street
    Melbourne
    Phone: 03 8627 1568
    Web: melbourne.intercontinental.com

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