Mini Review - Venue - The Team Room, QVB Sydney

Rosie D
Dec 11, 2015
3 min read

I had high hopes for this place.

I was hoping that it would go high above my very high expectations.

I wanted amazing food and staff who knew their beef cuts as well as their loose-leaf teas.

I go everything I dreamed at this place!

I have to admit, I was a tad apprehensive when I walked in to the room. The tables were set, although looked a bit bare without table centrepieces. As the room filled with our guests, I began to realise that this was going to be…awesome. You don’t always need centrepieces when you have silly paper hats, novelty plastic bookmarks and bon bon casings littering the middle of a table!

Our signature mocktails – which we had designed to our company’s colour scheme and major Master Plan works – were a complete and utter hit. When I asked the Event Coordinator about designing the mocktail concoctions especially for us, I thought I would be smacked down with tea bags. But the coordinator took our suggestions and ran with them…the result being:

L – A tart sencha green tea enriched with strawberries, mint, lime, sugar syrup and a splash of soda.

R – Blue berry mocktail – to this day I still don’t know what was in it, but it was amazeballs!

Entrée time. Now entrées were held back as some of our guests were running late. (I am a stickler for this – if you are ever attending an event at a venue like this, please arrive at least 15 mins before the arrival time specified on the invite – that way you won’t have people resenting you because they are getting hangry [yes, hangry – hungry and angry] while you are still dordling into the room!)

Once everyone was seated, we were blessed with alternate serve choices of Carmelised onion and goats curd tart with whitlof, Treviso and rocket and the very, very gorgeous Potato gnocchi with braised lamb shoulder, tomato and feta (pictured below). Oh – emm – geee! The lamb fell apart with a fork – deliciously tender with a beautiful, flavoursome tomato sauce. The gnocchi – I’ve never had hand-made gnocchi like this before. Pan fried to give a crispy texture on one side. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever tried.

Pictured: Potato gnocchi with braised lamb shoulder, tomato and feta

Moving on to mains…get ready for this…another alternate serve gem!

Char grilled beef sirloin, dauphinoise potato and green beans with parsley and lemon butter or… Baked chicken breast with spiced pumpkin and walnut and fig salad. Anyone who knows me will know which one I had. It was the chicken.

The chicken was perfectly cooked. Absolutely floorless. The skin was slightly salty and not overly crispy. Although my favourite things on the plate were the spiced pumpkin (which was in ‘mash’ form) and the fig and walnut salad. I’m not normally a fan of figs, but coupled with a bit of pumpkin and the chicken, they added a beautiful sweetness to what can sometimes be a boring dish. The walnuts added some crunch and a wonderful nutty flavour that worked well with the pumpkin.

If this was my last meal – I would die happy!

Pictured: Baked chicken breast with spiced pumpkin and walnut and fig salad

[Blogger's note: This picture doesn't even do it justice. And the spiced pumpkin is at the back / underneath YUM!]

Desserts.

Given that this is what The Tea Room does best, my highest hopes were reserved for this course.

I don’t even think I need to write about it.

I’ll just leave this here…

(Top to bottom: Raspberry chocolate mousse cake, Praline profiteroles with raspberry cream, mini pavlovas and mini lemon meringue tart.)

So pretty that I don’t think anyone wanted to eat them!

Pros:

Great food
Great end-to-end service
Knowledgeable staff
Caters for even the weirdest of dietary requirements (we had one guest who was gluten free, vegetarian and allergic to a handful of common ingredients) – this guest was the happiest!
Plenty of space – even with tables in the room. Our party had 141 guests.
Beautiful chandeliers
Central location – close to hotels and transport