Listen up hoteliers or you’re toast!

The above represents just one of the myriad ways in which hoteliers can get toast spectacularly wrong! (image credit below)

Although we’ve previously written an open letter to the hotel industry on free WiFi, this message to the same audience may almost be as important!  It concerns the critical issue of toast, a matter which is close to the heart of our guest blogger Andrea Kirkby.  It’s over to you Andrea…

Breakfast is the most important meal of my day when travelling – as I’m sure it is for many of you.  We all need a positive and energising start.

A hotel that does a really good breakfast – whether it’s a full English, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs or a good buffet – is a hotel that immediately scores extra points.  Irrespective of where it happens to be.

It’s vital though that the toast is absolutely spot-on.  And there are so many ways to get it wrong!  Here is a list of the more common “sins”:

• Cold toast. Yes, I know the kitchens are not right next to my table, but please make sure you get my toast to me before it’s completely devoid of any warmth whatsoever! Ideally, toast should be hot enough that when I spread the butter on it, the butter starts to melt into the toast.

• Soggy toast.  Good toast is nicely crunchy on the outside, so that the soft melted butter (see above!) contrasts with the brittle toasted layer, and then you have the soft centre of the bread as a further contrast (if the toast is toasted all the way through, I think it’s been overdone).  But soggy toast is just horrible.  If you’re not going to make it crunchy, why even call it ‘toast’?  It’s just lukewarm bread and deserves rejection.

• Soggy, cold toast. A combination of both the above – an abomination!

• Serving half brown and half white toast.  So I personally dislike brown bread but that’s not the point.  Why not ASK ME which kind I want and give me the right kind?  If you think about this, it’s a lose-lose situation for the hotel.  If I like brown, you’ve given me 50% white, and if I like white, you’ve given me 50% brown – guaranteed to get it wrong!

• Overdone toast.  It’s surprising how often staff serve almost-burnt toast without noticing.  I wonder if this comes from varying perceptions: what may be “overdone” for one may be “beautifully crisp” for another!

• Silly conveyor-belt toast machines.  Yes, I know if I toast it myself, I’ll get my toast the way I like it and hot.  But the conveyor machines are dreadful things.  They’re never big enough for all the guests, so you end up with a queue of barely-awake people all holding bits of bread and waiting for the mindnumbingly slow machine to do its job.  And most of the time, they are on a setting that means if you put the bread through once, it’s only warmed but not actually toasted, but if you send it through the second time, it’s charcoal.  Who invented the darned things!

Toast that's gone a bit soggy (image credit below)

Maybe I’m over-fussy.  In a cheap hotel, I take what I can get (as long as it’s not cold and soggy at the same time – never acceptable).  And the best cheap B&Bs (the clue’s in the name!) will often serve superb breakfasts.

But if I’m staying in a four or five star hotel, particularly if they have a ‘name’ restaurant with a highly-rated chef, I expect the toast to be right.

The intriguing thing is, even top hotels often get toast very wrong indeed.  All the attention to detail that pays off in other areas disappears when it comes to the toast.  It’s as if they don’t think toast is important.

Well it is!

I should add too that warm bread is perfectly acceptable – as long as it’s warm bread, not fake-toast!  One of the most delightful breakfasts I ever had was on a German sleeper train and consisted of a huge warm roll (made with good strong white flour), with butter and honey.  Superb.

But it’s interesting that while many half-decent restaurants will give you warm bread with your lunch or dinner, the rolls at breakfast are always stone cold (and to add insult to injury, sometimes rock hard too).

I could easily write more about jam (some hotels appear to have discovered jam with no actual fruit in it; I’m sure it helps keep their costs down but it doesn’t excite the palate), butter (I am fairly svelte and trying to keep that way, but margarine is just too disgusting – I hate not being given the choice!), coffee (with warm milk, please!)… but I won’t.

Because all those things are marginal compared to the big issue of toast.

Dear Hotelier. Please, please, PLEASE get the toast right.  And if you do, you’ll get me coming back to your establishment again and again – and I will of course constantly be “toasting” your success to all my friends.

You can read about some of the most innovative London hotel breakfasts in another article.  And if you’ve given up on hotel breakfasts entirely you may want to give some of London’s best brunch spots a whirl instead!

Get the best-value London hotel deal from 30+ booking sites in 1 click

Photo credits: Sheep purple’s photostream, Alegrya’s photostream.