Hotel Buffet Breakfasts ( cold) How do you do them?

[NoelleHawthorne]

I was abroad with a lavish hotel breakfast of cold items. (North European)
If there were two of you eating, how would you arrange collection and arrangement of the items?

I think I did it wrong.

It does sound rather civilised.
But what if there was a plate with 2 plain croissant, one chocolate & an apricot?
We'd all want the apricot, and there would be much grumbling to the designated pastry person.

I love a Hilton breakfast. Haven't had one in years though. So much choice.

One of us gets the table. The other gets the orange juice. The table holder returns to get the fruit. Both sit and drink orange juice and fruit. Then take it in turns to get hot food etc.

Noelle I was recently in a hotel in Cyprus where many of the guests were Russian. They have a very interesting buffet technique; take the entire bowl/dish/platter place on the table and eat.

I'm a go up to the buffet and take what I want girl but do like the sound idea of the German method.

DGS goes to a boarding school with lots of Chinese children and apparently they do this with roast lunch on Sunday: so one gets just roast beef, one gets a plate of potatoes, one Yorkshire puddings etc. Then they put everything on their table and help themselves. Apparently it does depend on cooperative dinner ladies.

We all get what we want individually and then sit down and eat it. I've never noticed that German families have communal plates but if I did I would think that they were fussy and wasteful (unless they ate the whole lot obviously).

We lived in Germany for ten years, and I never saw families loading up communal plates at breakfast. The little bins on the table were hit or miss-sometimes they were there, but more often not.

DP and I stayed in a hotel in Spain last year where almost all the other guests were German. I didn't notice any buffet behaviour like what you describe, but we both want to choose our own food, so we do just that.

We might get drinks for both of us, for example if there is a coffee machine that you have to get up to use.

In a different, more mixed nationality hotel, the couple we saw making sandwiches fruit for lunch from the breakfast buffet were almost certainly German.

Some friends of ours commented that once when they stayed in another Spanish All Inclusive hotel, they observed some rough looking British people and Russians literally fighting over the chips .

That is definitely the way to do buffets with children.

Buffet and DC give me the horrors - and I'm their mother !

Not sure it is more wasteful. We do it with pastries but not the whole buffet selection (well DID, back in the day that breakfast was more than a once of cold toast wrestled from the hands of an almost 2 yo). If I was being a greedy guts on my own, I'd get at least 2 mini pastries. But if getting for DH and me together would feel greedy getting more than 3 so we'd split one and then get more only if greed won out.

the german way sounds CONTROLLING!

i like my way better.....

Communal plate sounds lovely and more cultured.

But what happens when it runs out of the thing you want to eat?

Is communal plate transported by a single bearer back to the buffet table to replenish said item, leaving everyone foodless?
Or is a group visit bearing communal plate required, to be sure all preferred items are sourced?
Or is a runner dispatched with a small side plate to collect more of the required item(s)?

How could I be sure they'd come back with the right thing? (I know for a fact my DH would not come back with the correct cheese.)

Note that the Germans are revered for their efficiency. I think the communal plate approach could just be too complex for us English.

Well I've just come back from New York where a cold buffet breakfast was served every morning. There were a mixture of English, German, Scandinavian and Italian families there - amongst others. NOBODY did the communal plate you describe. Are you sure it wasn't just families with smaller children where the parents can, to an extent, dictate what the children are going to eat so they bring enough food back so they are not hopping up and down every 10 seconds to get little Hans a slice of cheese or because Lotte wants another egg?

On holiday in the Far East this summer I noticed the Chinese guests do breakfast in a totally different way.
One plate with everything on it; fruit, yoghurt, bacon, noodles. All piled up. We were but they were probably surprised as us going up & down several times.

We were in Moscow last month, we were the only Brits/Irish. We filled a plate/bowl with what we wanted, ate that, then decided if we wanted more or something else. No wastage unless we didnt like something. Compare that to the other hotel residents, primarily Russian or German. They filled their table with bread baskets, plates of cold cuts and cheese, pastries, etc and then picked at it all. There was so much wastage from these tables, I found it disgraceful to be honest. I'll be sticking with my version.

DH & I like different things. A communal plate wouldn't be much use. Plus he'd have scoffed most of it before I'd had chance to butter my first roll.

Oh just to clarify, me and OH filled our own plates. No sharing here!

Oh no, I hate sharing. I find tapas restaurants very stressful and DH loves to wind me up. The only way to not be stressed that you're not going to get enough / be able to eat the bits you want - is to order far too much. Which is lovely and decadent but a bit wasteful at a buffet.

Depends, in the poshest hotel we have ever stayed in we were shown to our table so no worry that we would lose it. Our hot drink order was taken and we went up to get food. We selected food separately then went back and ate the food. Repeated as more food was wanted.

In a less posh hotel where we choose our own table then I will do something to indicate the table is taken: put down newspaper/book, dismantle intricately folded napkin. Food selection is as above.

We like different things and I would not want DH's eggs contaminating anything I would be wanting to eat so the communal plate thing wouldnt work for us.

DH and I normally have things on a couple of plates ie bread/toast/jam/butter on one, meats/cheese on another, fruit on another and we have our own plates which we use to eat whatever we take off the other plates.

This thread has reminded me of breakfast in a Premier Inn in London last year.

A family on the next table returned to their table with full English breakfasts and sat down.The Dad then got up to go and get something he'd forgotten and whilst he was gone the Mum put salt and pepper on his breakfast.

I thought this was really odd.

I mean (a) they hadn't even tasted the food so had no idea how salty or not it already was (b) who the hell does that to someone else's food anyway!!

when i used to waitress I lost count of the men who got their wives to order for them

Singaporeans also do this.

It also means that they totally load up plates with more food than they can eat and then just leave it.

I've seen people taking twelve croissants "for the table" and sod everyone else.

I stick to individual plates.

One of us sits at the table with children, sorts them out with juice / milk. Then they go for tea & coffee (if that's on one of those urn things) or wait at the table to order it.

The other goes to the buffet for large plate of rolls / fruit / cheese / pastries etc and brings that back with 4 small plates. Big plate in middle, everyone helps themselves. And there's no waste :)

V occasionally will allow children up to buffet to "help" but far easier without them!

Norbert - it could have been worse, she could have cut up his food!