The Great British Buffet Breakfast
Why hotel breakfasts should come with a ‘warning: may cause existential crises’ label?!
Breakfast was exactly what I expected: a dreary parade of the same bland offerings every overpriced, bog-standard hotel insists on serving, as if dictated by some unwritten law of mediocre meals. It’s like hotel buffets are the result of a secret committee dedicated to ensuring that no one actually hates their breakfast but no one enjoys it either.
The dining room, draped in tired tartan and outdated decor, was a monument to the culinary monotony I’ve come to dread on work trips. I picked at a croissant that could’ve easily doubled as a doorstop, while around me, people shoved down their food with alarming enthusiasm. Plates were piled high with bizarre, mismatched combinations—I nearly choked on my stale pastry as I watched in disbelief as one guy eagerly mixed baked beans with a few pitiful slices of cantaloupe. Honestly, lock him up, because that’s just perverted.
There are plenty of things we do in society without questioning—like pretending we actually enjoy small talk with our neighbours or acting like waiting in line for a below average theme park ride is worth the hour we’ll never get back—but this has gone too far. At what point did we enter a twisted social experiment where everyone collectively decided to endure this nonsense and then call it a holiday? It’s as if we’ve all silently agreed that waking up early to face a buffet of rubbery eggs and childhood cereals is just part of the deal, like some bizarre rite of passage into a life of mediocrity.
As I sat there, sipping tasteless coffee and wondering how this became anyone’s idea of a good time, I couldn’t help but question my reality. Had I gone too hard on the G&Ts at The Fringe last night and actually died? Being trapped in this gastronomic nightmare, surrounded by people who seemed genuinely content, sure felt like my own personal purgatory.
I was wrong of course. An American family sat down next to me- “how quaint is this” the mum declared to the whole restaurant so it turns out, I was actually in hell.