When I was about 14 my parents took me and a pal to the south coast of England for a long weekend. We stayed in a B&B that smelled of chips but had a view of the sea, went for walks on the beach, and plotted how to procure a cigarette that we could smoke out of view and pretend to enjoy.
Our first morning in the diningroom we were offered a full English breakfast. I was already on high alert because I had seen a plate emerging with the rashers absolutely swimming in bean juice. I didn’t want the same fate to befall me, but I also didn’t want to have the alternative – cornflakes – because we had those at home and I was on my holidays. I ordered the fry but was emphatic about my abhorrence of beans. My poor friend had to have the cornflakes because she was a vegetarian, it was the 1990s and Linda McCartney hadn’t made it to Torquay.
When my plate came out it was bean free. However, there was another evil entity abutting my sausages. It was a whole, scalped, cold, raw, tinned tomato, surrounded by a pool of its own watery juice. This monstrous red flesh ball looked like it had just been lifted out of a skull. It was like no tomato I had ever seen before. I asked for the cornflakes and became a lifelong devotee to a dry fry. No beans, no tomatoes, nothing emitting moisture. A runny yoke is permissible, but I alone will control where it goes.
Fast forward a few decades and it’s early 2025. I’m about to embark on the dance of the hotel breakfast buffet in a charming four-star establishment in Co Kildare. Is there anything more enchantingly predictable than the dance of the hotel breakfast buffet? First you must choose your time wisely. Come down too early and you forfeit time luxuriating in the hotel bed and watching Sky News because working out the channels is like solving the riddle of the Sphynx. Come down at peak time or later and you’re going to get caught in a queue for the rotary toaster and all the tiny croissants might be gone. You must try to read the minds of your fellow hotel guests and choose a breakfast window just before peak and never on the hour or half hour. Many poor, harmless fools will choose a nice, rounded time like half nine or ten. So, you want to aim for 9.20am or 9.50am to be in your seat and smug by the time the masses arrive.
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Next, there’s the ceremonial placing of the room key on the table. This ritual involves briefly sitting down, marking the territory with your keycard by the upturned coffee cup, waiting another 30 seconds, and then asking, “will we go up?” with all the nonchalance in the world.
As he went for the sausages I let out an anguished gasp and at the same time an employee intervened
Then there’s the circling of the buffet, taking in all on offer. Most hotels are still disappointingly prudish with their cereal offerings. Cornflakes, Rice Krispies, All Bran for the love of God. Granola if you’re lucky. Rarely berries, because berries are one of the most expensive natural resources in the world as any parent of small children will attest to. There’ll be a fruit salad with alarming quantities of apple and rock-hard pineapple. And of course, the piece de resistance, the parade of bain-maries and their payloads of eggs and pork products.
On this morning in early January I went straight for the hot food. I had my heart set on a hotel sausage and no intention of dithering around with yoghurt or muesli. Alas I was stopped in my tracks by a truly horrifying sight. A man had gone first for the vat of beans, loading them on to his plate. He then proceeded to dip the serving spoon, glistening with bean juice, into the eggs, the rashers, the black and white pudding. He tainted each and every item with a shock of orange. As he went for the sausages I let out an anguished gasp and at the same time an employee intervened, gently removing the offending spoon from his hand and gesturing at the sausage tongs. Who raised this man, about to scoop up sausages with a beany spoon? Had he never considered those of us who observe a dry fry? What had led him to this point of assumption that everyone was on board with his cross-contamination?
The moral of the breakfast buffet is: never assume your fellow man is okay with a smear of bean juice or the emissions of an errant tomato. Respect the dry fry. And for the love of God don’t put your regular bread into the gluten-free toaster.
