Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Afternoon Tea at the Peak Lounge, Park Hyatt Tokyo

A few weekends ago at the start of Silver Week, hubby and I had afternoon tea with his colleague and her husband at The Peak Lounge on the 41st floor of Park Hyatt Tokyo. If you think the name sounds familiar, it's because this hotel was featured prominently in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation. The tea was such a fantastic experience that we decided that night there would be an Afternoon Tea Club for his office, as in we all will go out to tea one weekend a month (this coming weekend will be at the Mandarin Oriental!). 

We didn't know what we were in for, other than the fact that we would be on the 41st floor. And then the elevator door opens and we were transported to another world, complete with a mini bamboo grove! 

The Peak Lounge is quite large, and the tall glass ceiling added to the sense of vastness. The four of us sat there and stared wide-eyed at our surroundings for a good long while before we could gather enough attention to read the menu.


All of us decided to have the "regular" afternoon tea for 3,800yen/person, without the special tea selection or fanfare (glass of champagne, etc.). Then we just chatted away and watched the waitstaff fill up our table with goodies.

The pictures show 2 people's portion, and while it doesn't look much, the neat thing about Park Hyatt is that they offer unlimited savories and sweets. As in, in addition to our 3-tiered tray there were waitresses who walked around with trays of yummy bite-sized treats, and we could have as many and as much as we wanted. The teas are unlimited also, so we could try as many teas as we wanted, although I only had room for 2 selections.

Close up of some of the treats. As you can see, several of the items weren't on the tiered-tray. We sat there for a good 2.5 hours, just slowly enjoying our afternoon.

Afterwards, we moved the party upstairs to the New York Bar on the 52nd floor. All of us were stuffed by that time, and so we just opted for cocktails, rice crackers, and nuts.

View of the Peak Lounge (top) and Shinjuku (bottom 2 photos) from entrance of New York Bar. The bottom right is of Shinjuku all lit up as we left after dark.
Here are some photos inside the hotel. This library corridor reminds me of the time labyrinth in Interstellar ^.^

Here's a shop (or is it a museum, I can't really tell...) on the first basement (I think) of the building. Would I come back here for tea? YES.

2 comments:

Unpaletteable said...

Thank you for sharing, that looked AMAZING. X

D. said...

Hi Unpaletteable,

I think what we enjoyed most that afternoon was the relaxed atmosphere and the serene slowness of it all. A great refuge from the big city outside!

Cheers,
D.

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