Eating around the world

It's been a while since a post but that's mainly because I haven't been out and about eating.

That should change however because I'm in London working for the next few weeks. So that means a lot more choice plus I basically have to eat out every night.
I'm not going to go crazy though and tell you about every meal I have, just the ones of note.

The first one of note would cover just about 1/3rd of the meals I'd have anyway as I want to talk about something I love, and love to criticise - hotel breakfasts.

Over the years I've been fortunate enough to do a bit of travelling so have stayed at my fair share of hotels. Along those travels I've determined what I believe to be the best hotel buffet style breakfast. It has to check all the key elements to be considered a good spread.

You need firstly to have a good selection of items to choose from, variety is the spice of life after all. Breakfast cereals of different amke and manufacture, fruit and yoghurts, toast both white and brown as a minimum plus some other sort of pastry and a choice of hot foods such as eggs, bacon, sausages and beans. If it's a budget hotel likely the hot food stuff may not be on offer, which is acceptable however for mine it's never going to win a best breakfast buffet award.
Lastly I think a good breakfast should have a local speciality, for example on hotel I stayed at in Bangkok had steamed dumplings and bbq pork buns at breakfast. I like when there is local dishes because you get to sample new things that you may not otherwise try.

So I'm staying at the Novotel in Hammersmith which is a nice enough hotel and more importantly their breakfast is quite reasonable too. There's 4 cereals, can't remember what they were exactly but I recall cornflakes and rice bubbles at least. They have rockmelon, watermelon, apples, bananas and at least 2 types of yoghurt that I've seen so far.

On the bakery front they have sliced white, brown and grain bread, as well as a couple of loaves you can cut your own chunks from. There's also the pastries; croissants, something I want to call a sultana danish as well as a custard danish. Not enough to be truly spectacular but passable. Also in their favour they have gone to the trouble of providing several different jams plus nutella spread for your croissants.

One thing I really love in a good breakfast is pancakes, and sadly the Novotel has let me down in this regard. Scoring back a half point though they do have waffles, complete with maple syrup.

Donna Summer said gotta have some hot stuff baby and I whole heartedly agree. Novotel offers a decent range of hot foods. There's 2 styles of eggs, poached and scrambled, baked beans, bacon, breakfast sausages, some sort of noodles and hash browns. They also score well in the local delicacy stakes offering friend black pudding. I'll overlook the fact that technically black pudding isn't from England because it at least shows effort.
They could also have added some grilled tomatoes and maybe mushrooms to the line-up, but it's passable.

Another key ingredient at breakfast is the liquid refreshments. Orange juice is a mandatory and I think I'm yet to find a hotel that doesn't have it at breakfast, Novotel doesn't dissapoint here either. They also have that other staple apple juice as well as well as pineapple but something that's a definite win is cranberry juice. I love cranberry juice and it's a rarity to find it on the menu, mostly probably due to the price.
The other thing people want for breakfast is hot drinks. I'm not a big tea drinker nor hot chocolate but I heard people order them and stuff turned up to their table, so I guess they have them both althogh I can't comment on whether it's good or bad.

The other major hot drink is that number one world traded commodity - coffee. Here the Novotel fails big time. I didn't think a halfway decent coffee would be that hard, but whatever they've done they've messed up royally.
It's the drip filter stuff which is never great to start with, but this one seemed bitter as. I normally don't have sugar in coffee even when black, but I put 2 spoons in this one and still tasted like garbage.

Overall the breakfast is quite good, which is a good thing too being as I'll be eating it for the next 3 weeks. I'll just have to avoid the coffee and stick to the awesome cranberry juice.

Update: It appears someone must read this or they just wised up but the past few breakfasts they have had mushrooms and tomoatoes. Now if only we can get some pancakes organised.