COMMENTARY, Nov 19 – You’re staying at a hotel and there is a buffet breakfast included in the price of the room.
The next morning you head down to the restaurant to find a sea of options, from cold cuts and congee to nasi lemak and roti jala.
And an ocean of other hotel guests, each and every one of them hungry for their brekkie too.
At least that was my experience during a recent staycation at a local hotel. Great food choices but figuring out how to navigate all of them was daunting.
With that in mind, here are my humble recommendations on how to make the most of your hotel breakfast buffet, from gaming the egg station to which macronutrient to prioritise.
All in the spirit of a delectable, efficient and above all, frustration-free morning meal.
(This non-exhaustive guide might sound silly to those whose entire reason for going to a breakfast buffet – or indeed any sort of buffet – is to embrace their inner glutton and gorge with abandon. But do bear with me.)
The first action most breakfast-goers take after telling their server what coffee they would like (an Americano, a latte?) is to make a beeline for the egg station.
This doesn’t necessarily mean they relish eggs more than other foods; there just tends to be quite a queue to order then wait for one’s eggs.
Sunny side up, over easy, omelette, plain poached or slathered with Hollandaise – you can have it however you like... if you have the patience for it.
Nowhere is this clearer than at hotel buffets where the egg station is manned by a single overworked cook. (Be nice and mind your Ps and Qs; never yell out your orders.)
Now I enjoy a couple of sunny side ups as much as the next person but if the line is too interminably long and all I want is some egg protein, there are easier ways to get them without soaking up the fry-up fumes.
There is always a tray of gently warmed scrambled eggs next to the hash browns and sausages. The nasi lemak station, if there is one, will have wedges of hard boiled eggs or even whole, unshelled ones for you to take back to your table and slowly peel at your leisure.
Speaking of egg protein, one way to avoid overeating and ending up in a carb-fuelled food coma after your breakfast buffet is to prioritise protein and fibre first.
The idea here is simple: if you fill your plate with protein and fibre rich food first, you’d have less space for unhealthy fats or highly processed carbohydrates. Protein and fibre are also more satiating, so you would be less likely to stuff yourself silly with cold pastries and mounds of noodles.
This might mean eggs, chicken or even some tuna salad from the salad bar for protein. To load up on heart-healthy fibre, go for overnight oats, leafy greens (from the salad bar again) and cut or whole fruits from the fruit station.
For the latter, you might want to go for complete fruits (cut or whole) and maybe skip the fruit juices. It can certainly be tempting to ask for a mix of watermelon/apple/orange juice since someone is doing the juicing for you.
But such juices are free from healthy fibre and since it’s in liquid form, you’re likely to have a spike in your blood sugar from the burst of pure fructose. Eat your fruits, rather than drink them.
There are exceptions to the rules, of course. (Not that I’m calling these unsolicited suggestions “rules” by any means; I’m merely sharing what works for me, an admittedly meagre n-of-1 sample size.)
If your hotel breakfast buffet has a roti canai station, I would definitely take the trouble to wait for a fresh roti or two. Most folks would grab the ready-cooked roti kosong or roti telur from the warmer trays in front, sure.
But there is something special about waiting for a piece of freshly made roti canai – especially when you see it being made right in front of you – that is unlike any other feeling in the world.
Consider it nostalgia from my childhood when my Dad would take me to the neighbourhood roti canai stall for brekkie (I was the only preteen who would get a saucer of dal, curry and sambal).
You probably have a similar experience growing up. You know why there is no taste like a crispy roti that is all puffed up and flakey from being “clapped” and scrunched up right from the griddle.
But that’s unhealthy, you say, after all that preaching about protein and fibre, whole fruits over fruit juice.
Nein, I reply, this is PRECISELY why I make sure to get my nutrition earlier and elsewhere, so I can indulge in my favourite roti, guilt free.
It’s strategy, baby.
Finally, spare a thought for food wastage. While unlike, say, a Korean BBQ buffet or a Japanese shabu-shabu buffet where the proprietors will charge you a sum for unfinished food, hotels don’t apply such restrictions to their guests.
Still, there’s no reason to load up your platter only to take a nibble here and there, push it aside and get up again to grab more. There’s our poor planet with ever dwindling resources, of course, but mostly it’s just bad manners.
If you have read this far (we’re nearly at the end of this tiresome treatise, I swear!), you might well be rolling your eyes and will likely still go about your hotel breakfast buffet experience however you like.
And well you should; you do you. Yet for those who are curious enough, just give this a try. It might not all work out for you but it’ll be an interesting attempt at the very least.
But trust me on the roti canai.
