Hotels & toast

[Marmora Man]

What is with hotels or B&Bs and toast?

You come down in the morning, blearily ask for one pot coffee and one pot tea (Mrs MM) and they turn up with a rack of toasted, sliced bread. By the time you've sampled the cereal buffet, eaten a small bowl of fruit salad and tackled the "full English" cooked the toast is cold, limp and unappetising.

Why the waste? Why the awful bread? Offering decent bread, toasted to order and served at the end of breakfast would be so much better.

[JohnL]

Every hotel seems slightly different in the way they do Breakfast .. which is strange considering they all offer the same things. Some I like others I hate.

Marriots is always nice, one of the best for Breakfast I'd say :)

[????]

A fair few years back I realised that you didn't have to have the Full English when staying at hotels* - believe me since then life in hotels/on breaks etc has been better.

*another equally liberating thing was giving up on having airplane food (except in First Class)

[dukesdenver]

I believe the technical term for toast in this state is 'wangy'.

[Mick Mac]

For me its not the toast its the sausages. I absolutley cannot eat cheap sausages. When staying in a hotel, irrespective of the class of hotel, I'd like some decent food in the morning, surely a decent sausage is about 30p, so why not provide something decent.

Same argument for poor quality bread for toast I guess. Nothing more annoying thatn getting food in a hotel that you would not eat at home.

[cate]

I don't understand why there can't be a toaster out so you can make your own. When staying at several different hotels in the States their breakfast room had a make your own toast section and a make your own waffle section.

[Mick Mac]

UK hotels have this idea too in the type of hotel that has a self service breakfast area, but you have to wait for it to go through the conveyor - pain in the ass.

[cate]

Conveyor - what???

[Mick Mac]

conveyor pain the ass toaster thingy.

[cate]

Well, where I stayed we didn't have to deal with conveyors!

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Surely the whole point of a rack is so the toast doesn't go soggy?

[bonniebird]

Ooo those conveyor belt toasters are amazing!

[womanofdulwich]

Hotels are not the way to go for good breakfasts- Up market b and b - all that local sourced sausages and bacon. We stopped going to hotels 3 years ago and have not looked back- recommend this one:

link to b and b

[louisiana]

The only hotel chains I trust for food are the small ones: Malmaison and Hotel du Vin. Mal does excellent breakfasts.

[louisiana]

MM, I think the crap bread issue is a wider problem, not just among hotels. It's difficult to even find a restaurant that cares about the bread it provides. In my books, a restaurant that doesn't take bread seriously is not worth taking seriously.

[giggirl]

I don't eat bread on a day-to-day basis but toast is one of my "treat" foods. Perversely, my favourite toast is made from ordinary, cheap white bread - with a smear of melting butter. Gorgeous.

Hotel breakfasts tend to be nothing special. They cater for large numbers and it shows.

[kpc]

The Radisson in Birmingham does an excellent breakfast - bacon, scrambled eggs and grilled tomato, delivered to the room - but still suffers from the toast problem - quality of bread and cold.

[Applespider]

The 'conveyor' toasters are horrid. We have them at work. They'd be fine if they were set to toast properly and then had the dials removed so that people couldn't adjust them. But people insist on playing with the heat and the conveyor speeds with the result that the bread comes out simply as warm bread or completely charcoal. Argh!

I also hate what's happening to bread in this country. Bread's not supposed to stay soft for 2 weeks... and when you put butter on toast, it should keep some structure rather than collapsing into a soggy mass.

I make my own sourdough most weekends and freeze chunks of loaf. Scrambled eggs along with two thick toasted slices of real bread are heavenly for breakfast. The last hotel that managed to provide that was a little boutique one near Monterey in California. It's a long way to go for breakfast though.

[Mick Mac]

after a night in birmingham you need a good breakfast.

[kpc]

After a night in Birmingham, you need Mr Egg.

Mr Egg

But back on topic, it's not just poor toast letting down our breakfasts, but poor coffee.

[Nero]

Applespider,

Cd you PM me the recipe for the sourdough bread? I don't have a machine, so am looking to bake it in the oven, in a 2lb tin. Thanks.

[woofmarkthedog]

You get what you ask for..

http://www.dualit.com/assets/images/thumbnails/detail/0/detail_634.jpg I demand one of these at my table...

& yes it does raise ( & singe ) a few eyebrows BUT the toast is to die for

W**F

[brum]

kpc Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> After a night in Birmingham, you need Mr Egg.

>

> Mr Egg

>

> But back on topic, it's not just poor toast

> letting down our breakfasts, but poor coffee.

Ahh....Mr Egg. Eat like a Queen for ?3.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane, KPC.

[SimonM]

The best hotel breakfast I ever had was not in the UK or the USA but at Ballymaloe House in Ireland: 3 kinds of muesli, about 5 types of home-baked bread (including soda bread and scones still baking as you drifted into the restaurant), locally sourced bacon, sausage, black and white puddings, honey, home made jams and marmalade etc etc...You just did not want to move afterwards, but lounge about waiting for the home-made steak pie for lunch, the home-made chocolate cake for afternoon tea, the 4 course dinner etc etc..

The very best toast though is made on an AGA

[Marmora Man]

The very best toast though is made on an AGA

Ideally of bread also made on (in) the Aga. Our first married home had an Aga that was almost pre-historic, made 1920's. converted from coal to oil sometime in the 60's and still, sort of, working in late 80s. Our first meals were a shambles but gradually we learnt its ways and my wife's homemade bread, rising gently on the back of the Aga, then cooked inside it, was fantastic - fresh or toasted with Marmite.