SELENE
The Midtown Suite article took the room apart; this one moves to Club InterContinental. Over the course of a day the lounge wears three faces: afternoon tea at three, the cocktail hour at dusk, and breakfast the next morning. One night's stay catches all three — so this piece follows that order and watches the lounge fill up a whole day.
Afternoon tea: sweet first, savoury after, window seats to finish
The afternoon-tea counter is white marble with a bowl of flowers in the middle, sweet on one side and savoury on the other. The sweet end has cakes, mousse cups and small tarts, a raised glass plate holding a whole mille-crêpe cake sliced into a fan, and croissants and assorted puff pastries on the other side of the glass stand; the fruit is cut and lined up on a long platter — grapes, melon, guava and passion fruit, a cheerful row of colours.
The real afternoon tea starts when the three-tier stand reaches the table: cakes and savoury bites stacked tier upon tier, with a separate plate of small bites alongside. Our seats were by the window; the foam on the iced latte sat right at the rim, and outside was Taichung in the mid-afternoon — not too high, not too low, just the most comfortable angle this building has to offer.
The cocktail hour: hot dishes more serious than expected
A little after five, the counter changes shifts. The cold side is salads, cold cuts and fruit; the hot side is where the real weight is: beef-flavoured vegetable soup, mushroom cream soup, fish roe and shrimp siu mai steaming in whole baskets, black gua bao skins resting in a bamboo steamer, glossy braised pork belly, seasonal vegetables with bell peppers and baby corn, and a whole pan of beef fried rice. This is no longer "snacks to go with drinks" — it is the scale of a dinner. Nobody hurries you, and you may go back as many rounds as you like.
The drinks are at the other end of the counter: beer and sparkling water chilling in an ice bucket, sodas and juices lined up neatly in the fridge, the coffee machine in the same zone. Tuck the pork belly into a black gua bao skin with some lettuce and you have a black gua bao. When we raised our glasses the sky was not yet fully dark; by the time the glass in hand had become whisky, the window was a night view.
At the end of the hour we poured no more wine and ordered two hot lattes instead. The orange flowers on the table were still standing, the lounge lights had dropped a notch — an evening closed with coffee, at exactly the right pace.
Breakfast the next morning: slowly, with no checkout to chase
The next morning the lounge is in breakfast mode. Fresh flowers on the marble counter, and the hot dishes in a row: bacon and hash browns, beef ribs braised with tomato, Italian braised vegetables, braised tofu, bamboo steamers stacked high. On the Chinese side there is sea bass and lobster congee — slices of fish and lobster meat laid over the congee — with a wooden grid of nine small side dishes for the porridge. The Western finish belongs to eggs made to order: the hollandaise on the eggs Benedict still glossy, and an omelette cut open with its filling steaming.
Closing
A club lounge does not sell any single meal; it sells a rhythm: come in during the afternoon for coffee and the city view, eat the hot dishes slowly as dinner at dusk, sleep, and then have a breakfast with no clock on it the next day. The Midtown Suite was already good enough on its own; add the lounge's three acts and the night is complete. The other half of this stay is that Midtown Suite — the living room, the bedroom and a bathroom large with nothing to apologise for — in "InterContinental Taichung Midtown Suite: A Living Room, a Bedroom, and a Bathroom with Nothing to Apologise For". The two pieces together are the whole stay.
