Hotels in India and the Art of Breakfast Buffets

 

Breakfast buffets at Indian hotels are probably the best means of sorting out what the F&B experience will be like at their other restaurants. Unlike with hotels in many countries abroad, the Indian breakfast buffet is usually largely vegetarian, with an egg and dosa counter, as well as a token display of cold cuts and sausages. Marked, usually, with an absence of pork.

What are the points to look out for with a breakfast buffet in India?

1) Go for the pre-boiled eggs. Crack one open. The rest of the egg adventures will depend on the colour of the yolk inside and how fresh the egg tastes. If the boiled eggs served are lousy, then the rest of the breakfast is also, probably, a collection of lowest bids.

2) Check out the idlis. If they are fresh-steamed, plus points, but if they are lying sadly neglected in some sort of serving apparatus, then once again you realise that the typical Indian star hotel truly has not learnt anything from the many Indian vegetarian restaurants on the highway serving fresh steamed idlis throughout the day.

3) Expecting fresh fruit juice to be served is usually not going to happen. You can try. But the coffee and tea are the next tests - is the coffee is from a sachet and is the tea from a tea-bag? If the answer is YES in both cases, then you are again better off with the many vegetarian restaurants on the highways of India. 

4) Do they, for some inexplicable reason, serve what looks like desserts left over from last night's function? Gulab jamuns for breakfast, for example, are a dead give away. Likewise the bakery items, if the outlet in the lobby has bakery products left unused overnight, then chances are very good that they landed up at the breakfast buffet.

5) Take a morning walk around the hotel property, and try to see if you can spot the scent of fresh baking or even a tandoor, which will give you ample evidence on the freshness of the breads or parathas. If the buffet can not provide fresh parathas in the morning, and there is no evidence of a bakery on premises, then go for the dosa counter, and order a plain dosa - you can always load it with sprouts.

Most star hotel buffet breakfasts start at 0700 or so, and it is not likely that the executive chefs will have arrived by then, nor is it likely that the senior management is around. Assemble and serve is left to reasonably junior staff, and cost-cutting kicks in everywhere, so that's the end result of what you are getting.

The last star hotel I stayed at overnight, one of the bigger chains in India, did not disappoint me with the way the eggs were anaemic, the idlis were pre-stacked, the parathas were from the previous night and there was gulabjamun on the table. The black coffee I got was from an instant powder, the tea was fresh brew though, and the fruit could have been better.

As always, the dosa counter was good, and the egg counter next to it was average - making a soft fluffy omelette has gone out of our star hotel lexicon because the induction cook-top is always set at maximum and the butter used is yellow salted not-butter.

It was the absence of pork cold cuts and sausages that I could not understand. How can breakfast be complete without pork on the table?