I met two friends for afternoon tea at Dear Lilly. Was surprised how small the restaurant was, partly because the very romantic decor used cage like booths for individual tables and therefore took a lot of room in order to create a more private setting. We sat in the open area by the window and so had the better. The view of the harbour is great. The afternoon tea set was $318 for two persons but as we were three, I asked if tea could be served for three and they said they could add a third for the same per person price (ie. $159) if all three tea sets were served on the same tray.
The 3 tiered tray had 3 scones on the top deck - either raisin or plain, the second tier had 4 different desserts and the bottom tier was a selection of 4 different finger sandwiches - a good amount of food for afternoon tea. Scones were OK but nothing special. Of the desserts, our group liked the Coconut Vacherin with the tangy passionfruit curd and the Canele was a nice surprise with the Jamaica rum as it was not very sweet at all. Best of the finger sandwiches for me was the shrimp and crab cocktail sandwich. I had tea and my friends chose iced lemon tea since it was hot. As I liked strong tea, the restaurant was happy to put in 2 tea bags for extra strength.
Service was prompt and we enjoyed our afternoon tea very much.
In terms of unexpected things, after I sat down the server came to advise that there was a 90 minute dining limit. As it turned out, we actually stay about 1 hr 45 min before staff came by to discreetly mention there was another reservation coming in soon and so we quickly left. Nevertheless, I think the standard practice for restaurants is, and should be, to advise of any dining time limit during the booking process and not after I had booked and already arrived at the restaurant. There was no mention of a dining time limit when I made my on-line booking on the restaurant's own website and neither the confirmation of reservation e-mail nor the subsequent e-mail asking me to confirm we were coming made any mention of a time limit for the table.
A second fault, which I have seen frequently mentioned in other reviews, is that the phone for the restaurant is never answered. I wanted to inquire about dress code since the weather was extremely warm and tried calling the restaurant in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening on different days. I let the phone ring 20 times or more but it was never answered. I then sent an e-mail making the inquiry and only when I sent a second e-mail captioned "PLEASE RESPOND ASAP" on the day of my reservation did i get a response.