The exotic pleasures of the hotel breakfast buffet

East meets West over an omelette

There are few sights in life that deliver sweeter thrill than a well-stocked hotel breakfast buffet, rows of steaming trays and pastry baskets that allow you to begin your day by firmly setting expectations for the remainder: are you to be gluttonous or restrained, exploratory or focussed, broaden your horizons or stick to home comforts?

But if you’ve only travelled in the West, then I’m afraid you’ve missed out entirely on the hotel buffet’s true potential, to my knowledge tapped only by the right sort of over-priced, high-end hotel in Asia.

A disclaimer, before we go any further: no, I can’t afford luxury hotels, nor casual jaunts to Asia. But a perk of the day job is that I travel to the likes of Hong Kong or Seoul every now and then because someone or other wants to launch a phone there. And since they’re paying for the hotel, I’m lucky enough to sometimes end up in the sort that would normally fall well out of my Booking.com price filter.

In truth, I probably wouldn’t pick these hotels even if I could afford them, but they have their moments, and their chief charms fall at either end of the day: the glamorously sized bathtub you can often settle into late at night, and the sprawling spread you’ll find first thing in the morning. While I’ve not noticed a superior element to the Asian bathtub, breakfast is a different story.

It probably won’t surprise you too much to hear that Asian breakfast buffets tend to include Asian breakfast foods. Of course, just like Europe has its continental/cooked divide, and more divisions besides, so too there’s not really any single such thing as an Asian breakfast. But some things still prove universal to hotel kitchens: a steaming vat of congee, a tray of two of dumplings of some description or another, and at least one stir-fried dish that no Brit would recognise as a reasonable thing to order at nine in the morning.