let's take a train to anywhere: marmalade pantry tea session

What happens to rejected food reviews? They become blog entries (: Here's mine on our recess week Marmalade Pantry tea session!

eliza and i arrived at ion early and while waiting for fritz and shu-en (aka little miss late & little miss later), we went up to the 3rd floor (past TWG a level below) to check the place out. the marmalade pantry was quite crowded for a friday afternoon.

the staff didn't bother at all about the 'service' in 'service staff', right from the outset when we asked if we should/could make a reservation for 4.30 (you can't) to when shu-en arrived and we were left waiting (emphasis: waiting) to be seated. the waiter taking our order wasn't patient about explaining the afternoon tea set (we needn't have asked if the menu was clearer about it; it wasn't!), and get this, he freakin tried to cheat us out of having nutella cupcake! i'd been raving about the nutella cupcake and recalled seeing it in the display on the way in, so when he said it's no longer available and offered us 3 options out of the list of almost 10 on the menu, i was needless to say pretty disappointed :( but when shu-en and i went over to the display to pick the cupcakes, there were three nutella cupcake sitting pretty in the display. duno what's his deal manz... trying to keep the good ones for himself? :P

part-ruffled, part-amused by the treatment from the staff so far, our orders soon arrived. we didn't have to wait long, the display set was lovely, scones were warm and milky and the cream cheese spread was love. then the cupcakes arrived - we'd picked granny's apple (apple + cinammon) and hazel (nutella). nutella was the star of the day, though the cappuccino was definitely a pleasant surprise (: the seasalt caramel cheesecake shu-en picked out was also very nice, as were the egg/spinach finger and open face shrimp sandwiches that i had. harry potter grade - EE ;)

it wasn't long before we realized the reason the marmalade pantry can afford to have such crabby service. the food was delicious (: even the drinks were good! i ordered the earl grey tea which came with a personal teapot set and strainer for the leaves. tea was flavorful and i liked the consistency, esp. of the 1st cup. the rest had cappuccinos which tasted pretty good too :D