Mossgreen Tearooms

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926-930 High Street, Armadale, 9508 8888

My score: 3.5/5

My little finger told me that things were different at Mossgreen Tearooms. As I picked up my Wedgewood teacup the digit extended of its own accord, like a fern unfurling, all ladylike and posh. I experimented with this new configuration. It’s actually very comfortable to eat a cucumber sandwich with finger number five testing the breeze and so delightfully apropos to let the little finger point skyward while jamming a scone between lips.

The difference is that the tearooms are romantic and elegant, urban grit begone. They adjoin a handsome gallery where the current exhibition is ‘important ceramics’. A recent auction included a taxidermied turtle. Artworks decorate the walls of the spacious, terraced tearooms, mostly notably Kate Bergin’s wry, absurd still life paintings, which also feature on the menus. Armadale’s lovely lunching ladies are lively tableaux too (and just wait for the champagne laughter when the liquor license kicks in).

Caterer Peter Rowland runs the show, which makes the tearooms feel at once capable and strait-jacketed. I had a vision of crustless chicken sandwiches reaching to the moon and back while eating them here. Nevertheless, the dishes are created on site, apart from the pies and petit fours, which are brought in from Rowland HQ and an off-site patisserie. Breakfast channels European luxury hotels with continental platters and such dishes as coddled eggs with soft herbs and asparagus. Lunch evokes a London club: there’s Nicoise salad with seared tuna, classic club sandwich with proper sliced bread, and pot pie with delicious braised lamb and potato crisps. High tea is served anytime. Dainty nibbles include sandwiches of smoked salmon and butter, Waldorf-style chicken sandwiches with celery and apple, posh party pies, scones, and bite-sized sweets such as lemon meringue pie, macarons and teeny salted caramel eclairs. The food is fine but the graceful experience is the real triumph.

The floral tea sets are gorgeous but loose leaves would be preferable to T2 bags and, in a related complaint, $48 for high tea is expensive and out of whack with the rest of the menu, which is reasonably priced. Still, it’s remarkably pleasant to hang out in the 2014 version of 1920, which balances antique virtues with modern concerns about ethical meat, espresso coffee and, of course, what exactly one does with one’s little finger.

See their website.

More gallery dining:

Tarrawarra Estate, 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, 5957 3510
Local Yarra Valley produce is a feature of the menu at this peaceful indoor-outdoor restaurant. There might be Yeringberg lamb with a grain salad or smoked trout salad with saffron dressing.

McClelland Gallery & Sculpture Park, 390 McLelland Drive, Langwarrin, 9789 1671
The gleaming cafe overlooks the lake and lawns and is a great pitstop for coffee, light meals and lemonade scones with berry and lavender jam.

Cafe Vue, 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen, 9852 2346
It’s all lovely, whether you eat from the cafe menu of classics and healthy fare, book the Heide Garden Menu of estate-grown produce, or order a picnic hamper to eat in the grounds. Sundays now feature a dessert buffet and Vue de Monde sommeliers with hand-picked wine selections.

First published in The Age, February 9, 2014.