For years, hotel breakfasts feed one of the most heartfelt plots of my gastronomic dissatisfactions. I thoroughly enjoy the first snack of the day and, away from home, I tend to be upset by most of my morning experiences. Beyond the official stars that may hold the establishments in which I am staying, on very few occasions the breakfasts are usually up to my expectations.
I am bored to the point of boredom by the buffets crammed with withered things, those still lifes of indolent food, incapable of arousing any kind of enthusiasm in which I overcome the procedure to discard, choosing between what seems to me to be less bad. I can't stand the classic thermal buckets where refried sausages and slices of burnt bacon are cooked while waiting for customers. Nor scrambled or grilled eggs reheated under infrared lamps and special heaters in which they dry out until they lose their dubious gastronomic dignity. Something similar to the pathetic trays of sausages with overlapping slices, vague samples of cold cuts and plasticized cured meats.
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Breakfast at Finca Cortesin, in a picture provided by the hotel.
Or cheeses cut into portions, almost always cracked and oxidized by the effect of the environment. The show is not helped by pieces of industrial pastries that aspire to appear what they are not – fake croissants, Neapolitan, braids, flutes, reeds, palmeritas inflated with hydrogenated fats and plastered with syrups and ornaments of dubious origins. Something similar to the secondary role to which bread is relegated, almost always a stone guest of the bad morning feasts, without a single piece that deserves to be bitten after toast and smeared with butter and jam. Chapter as disappointing as the juices of boat, call them peach, pineapple and orange that do not remember, even vaguely, the fruit from which they come. Or coffee, the beginning and end of repeated disenchantments.
What do I expect and want to meet at a hotel breakfast? Few things, but exciting. I settle for a minimum commitment by the establishment. In a reduction to the extreme, it is enough for me that the trilogy that defines the so-called continental breakfast – coffee, croissant and orange juice – is able to excite me. Butter flaky croissant baked shortly before, freshly squeezed juice and a quality coffee, espresso or filter, with recognizable characteristics. Put to accumulate satisfactions if the croissant is added some quality bread and Iberian sausages and fruits in seasoning, honey on flakes Why is something so simple so difficult? With honorable exceptions, it is an aspiration that is not even usually in the wave of the so-called boutique hotels. I keep engraved in my memory the dalliances of Audrey Hepburn in the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, who only needed a croissant and a coffee in front of the Tiffany's window on Fifth Avenue in New York, with the music of Moon River in the background. Enough to make the extravagant protagonist dream according to the script of the famous journalist and writer Truman Capote.
Breakfast of the hotel Corales, in Tenerife, in a picture provided by the property.
By their very nature, buffets, on a self-service basis, always uncomfortable, which force queues and constant routes from the tables to the service stations, are formulas that, according to the surveys and opinions that crowd TripAvisor and the opinion portals, satisfy the majority of customers. Management system of whatever type, faces serious difficulties to reach certain gastronomic levels. As a matter of principle, its quality is inversely related to its size and the restrictions that usually guide the income statement of chains and large hotel establishments.
Among the exceptions, the Ibiza Gran Hotel, where one of the best breakfasts in Spain is offered with a buffet punctuated by several stations attended live and where a part of the exposed products are cut at the moment at the request of the clients. It doesn't matter if we talk about sausages, freshly baked breads, cheeses or smoked fish. "All fresh. Our buffet houses refinements that hide an economical intention and the will to avoid waste. The food that is not cut is perfectly preserved, "says Oscar Molina, head chef and responsible for the award-winning restaurant La Gaia within the Ibizan hotel. Concept of which participates to a lesser extent the macro buffet of the hotel Bahía del Duque (Costa Adeje, Tenerife), and with even greater care the Royal Hideaway Corales Beach in La Caleta (Adeje, Tenerife), both with declared gastronomic intentions.
At the opposite extreme militate the a la carte breakfasts of Finca Cortesín in Casares (Málaga) one of the great temples of the morning snacks. No buffet. All upon request of customers, whether eggs, fruit salads peeled instantly, juices, freshly baked pastries or smoked and sausages that are cut in the kitchen. Until a few months ago such a system was observed by the Boho Club hotel in Marbella, another of my favorite destinations that, unfortunately and at the request of the international clientele that visits it, has been forced to expand its morning service with an aspirational buffet of routine background.
A cook attends the egg stand at the Gran Hotel Ibiza, in an image provided by the hotel.
The mixed formula, buffet and à la carte dishes, prevails with unequal attention in most hotels, with few exceptions. For sensitivity and refinement, the principles that govern the Alma hotel in Barcelona, whose breakfasts reach outstanding levels. Along with a concise buffet with carefully chosen products – sausages, cheeses, breads, and smoked ingredients – there is its careful offer of dishes, a real milestone.
Another memorable breakfast is provided by the chef Marga Coll at the Arrels restaurant, inside the Hotel de Mar, Gran Meliá in Palma de Mallorca. It takes more than two hours to enjoy a breakfast that turns to brunch to become a festive lunch or meal. Tasting in five passes that slides along the paths of hyperbole and includes some of the most relevant gastronomic landmarks of the Balearic Islands: sausages, cheeses, empanadas, cocarrois, ensaimadas, sobrasada, cocas, cremadillos and island wines.
The eggs, alone, monopolize part of the hallmarks of hotel breakfasts. Nor is it easy to properly prepare a French omelette, nor fry two fresh eggs with lace, those that sizzle and shrink in clean oil generating lace edges. The same ones that the foreign clientele rejects, addicted to grilled eggs, almost always too done. Nor are eggs benedict simple, nor Fiorentina, two of my weaknesses. Naturally, I shy away from scrambled and à la tortillas that are made with egg, bowls full of pasteurized liquids that cooks handle with visible ladles to achieve results of irritating insipidity. A danger that lurks in all macro bufes with aspirations.
Breakfast table of the Boho Chic hotel in Marbella, in an image provided by the property.
For different reasons in which they deprive sensitivity and things well done I like the breakfasts of the Hotel Echaurren in Ezcaray (La Rioja); those of Molino de Alcuneza in the province of Guadalajara; those of Hotel Único, in Madrid, supervised by the chef Ramón Freixa; those of A Quinta Da Auga, in Santiago de Compostela; those of La Torre del Visco, in Fuentespalda (Teruel); those of the hotel Voro-Cap Vermell, in Mallorca; those of the Narbasu hotel, in Cereceda (Asturias) guided by the chef Nacho Manzano and his sisters, and those of the friendly Helen Bergen hotel, in Valencia, whose reception is located inside a busy cocktail bar and restaurant.
A small number of personal experiences that increases much more slowly than you would like. I remember the phrase of the hotelier Jaume Subirós, son-in-law of the famous Josep Mercader, at the Hotel Ampurdán, in Figueras (Girona), in the last decade of the 90s, when his breakfasts with anchovies from La Escala and sausages from farmers were an example for Spanish hotels. "Breakfast is the first satisfaction that we can offer our customers every day and the last memory they take from our home. More than enough reasons to take care of it as it deserves."