Raffles Singapore afternoon tea in The Grand Lobby: the price, the hours, booking and the dress code

The Grand Lobby is the atrium behind the hotel’s main doors: floor-to-ceiling Victorian pillars, 2 floors of galleries above and skylights that light the tables by day. The menu credits the Sarkies brothers, who founded the hotel, with bringing afternoon tea into this room. Guests add what the page leaves out: 13 Google reviews written between September 2023 and May 2026 mention a harp, and one of April 2026 tells of the staff asking the harpist for Hari Raya tunes.

The menu read on 12 October 2026 puts 5 savouries on the stand: a chicken and Pommery mustard roll with herb aioli, a crab tartlet with crispy sunchoke, a smoked salmon and caper cream cheese sandwich on multigrain bread, a cucumber and dill sandwich with yoghurt and an egg and avocado sandwich. 5 cakes follow, among them a grapefruit and pomelo cheesecake, a coconut and corn verrine and a macadamia and vanilla tartlet. The scones are plain and raisin, with clotted cream and a rose and strawberry jam.

A cup of JING loose-leaf tea, or the house coffee, is part of the price. 6 teas are included: Ceylon Breakfast, Earl Grey, Organic Jade Sword, Moroccan Mint, Chamomile Flowers and Lemongrass & Ginger. 6 more replace it for S$10 each, an Organic Darjeeling second flush, Assam Gold, an Organic Yunnan White Peony, a Sencha, Blackcurrant & Hibiscus and Flowering Jasmine & Lily. A visitor writing in November 2025 chose by smelling the leaves and had the same tea refilled at no charge; another, writing in September 2025, was encouraged to change teas halfway.

Champagne is by the glass: Billecart-Salmon Brut at S$20, its Rosé at S$30, Louis Roederer Collection Brut at S$40 and Cristal 2015 at S$190. Every figure on the menu is before the 10% service charge and the 9% goods and services tax. By our arithmetic a glass of the Brut is S$23.98 on the bill, and tea for 2 with a glass each comes to S$306.94.

Most of the reviews that mention the tea are happy ones: «not cheap but well worth the money for the experience» (January 2026), «good value and a memorable experience» (October 2025). The reservations are about the food. 2 visitors writing in December 2025 both give S$118 as the price, one of them per person: one found the hot savouries cold and the scones dry, the other the sandwiches poor. A guest writing in October 2025 wished the food were as good as the welcome, and one writing in December 2025 calls it a tea for the setting. Of the hotel’s 1,227 most recent Google reviews with a text, 99 mention afternoon or high tea, 12 of them with 3 stars or fewer.

For people staying, tea can come with the room: the Suite Stays Designed by Raffles Butlers offer, from 2 nights, includes afternoon tea for 2 beside breakfast. Without a table the lobby may be closed to visitors: 2 of them, writing in 2023 and in 2025, tell of being turned away as non-residents, a rule the site does not print.

Raffles gives one service time, 12.30pm to 5.30pm, with no sittings on its page, and prints one price. The Courtyard at The Fullerton Hotel Singapore seats tea twice a day and charges S$75 an adult and S$45 a child, before its charges, from 15 August to 15 November 2026.

The Landing Point at The Fullerton Bay Hotel keeps the same 2 sittings at S$68 and S$34. At Capella Singapore, on Sentosa, afternoon tea is laid daily in The Living Room as one of the benefits of staying.