Out of all the dishes and meals you could cook, I had never thought that breakfast was a particularly difficult one to pull off. However, it is a rarity that I have a hotel breakfast that is flawless. I'll stop here for a moment and offer one mitigating point that we could consider in a hotel's defence: unlike an evening service, where patrons are booked-in to allow the kitchen to spread the work, breakfast must be a case of an unpredictable army of hungry over-sleepers descending on the breakfast room en mass. All leaving it as late as possible to get their money's worth out of the room; spending extra time in the shower with no worry that the hot water cylinder will run out, pondering whether they will ever use the shower cap that they've already packed along with the sachets of coffee they don't normally drink and the sweeteners that they never take. There, I've offered up a defence for the hotel but, for goodness sake, it's the business they're in and they should know how to deal with it.
The most common way of dealing with the stampede for a cooked breakfast is to have it all cooked ready, under cloches, scrambled eggs separating out in to dry solids in a sweaty watery puddle, bacon and fried eggs taking on a rubbery character, beans reducing to starchy clagginess, fried slices reabsorbing any surrounding grease.
The hotel breakfast-room I set my bleary eyes on this morning was part of the Macdonald Hotel group. Although they had forgotten to deliver a newspaper to my room, they had taken the care to replace the mental exercise of the crossword with an unusual teaser as I entered the dining room. I greeted a member of staff with a smile and a pause to allow some indication of the modus operandi of the set-up, failing to receive more than a reciprocal smile, I wandered on to find a table. It appears that I had incurred a penalty for a false start and had to be called back into the control of the be-suited starter to be informed that under his assistance I would be less likely to "wander aimlessly around" to find a table. Grateful for such prompt intervention I dutifully followed my guide a few paces towards two, identical, vacant tables indicating that I may be seated here and placed a hand on a chair at one of the tables. What I should have realised was that this was clearly an indication that, under no circumstances, should I sit in this chair. Further more: should I sit here and not at the virtually identical table next to it, it would be totally unsuitable for my breakfasting needs and I would need to get up out of the chair and reseat myself at the correct table. Unfortunately I was clearly a little tired and misunderstood what I should have done. I know this, not because I was feeling tired and stupid, but because my guide kindly suggested it to me so I felt at ease, having a ready excuse for my dim-wittedness. Well, it's going well so far, I wonder how this splendid man can help me with... oh, he's gone. Off to assist another misguided soul, no doubt.
A different member of staff took my breakfast order and, being lower down the chain of command, was nearer my lower cerebral level and we understood each other perfectly well. Whilst I awaited my cooked breakfast, cooked to order I assume, my tea arrived as did the toast rack. In these tight financial times, a hotel is under financial pressure, what with over-use of the showers and carpet-bagging of sacheted items, and savings must be made. The toast rack was designed to hold 6 slices, but filling it would be an extravagance for just two diners, after all, the slices were at least a little bigger than a slice of supermarket malt-loaf, similar to the size of an old C-90 cassette tape. Also, the thin pat of butter was kept under a cloche, presumably to stop it evaporating away. Where I must congratulate them on cheffy cunning, is giving the toast the appearance and taste of being burnt on the edges, yet avoiding the amateur error of getting the toast crisp and warm. The genius of this was to avoid the disappointment of the toast going cold during the long wait for the cooked breakfast. Having said that, I don't mind waiting for a breakfast cooked to order and done well. For me a key element of a decent cooked breakfast is the sausage and, to be fair, the sausage of this breakfast - the single, modestly sized sausage - was rather adequate; Not too much of a preservative tang and slightly herby. The bacon was okay, the fat almost crisp. For many people, the Holy Grail of poaching an egg seems to be a neat, tidy little poached egg. This poached egg was pleasingly tidy, having a Halley's comet appearance like it had set the instant it hit the water, the yolk nicely runny but the white, what there was of it, was a little chewy with a slight tang like it had been cooked in vinegar. Give me a slightly rustic looking poached egg with a soft, yielding and soft tasting white, any day. The black pudding, was listed on the breakfast menu as MacLeod and MacLeod Stornoway Black Pudding, which I believe is award winning. The taste was good but I imagine it had been poached in oil in the kitchen because, although a soft black pudding is comforting, it fell apart on the plate and in the mouth with a less than comforting greasiness.
The sad thing is: this is one of the better chain hotel breakfasts I've had.
The search goes on.
No comments:
Post a Comment