What are current Hilton Garden Inn breakfasts in US during pandemic?
Oct 1, 20, 11:15 pm
#61
Original Member
Join Date: May 1998
Location: The County, Maine
Posts: 817
Auburn Maine HGI had a cooked to order FULL breakfast menu served in the restaurant using real plates, cups and cutlery. You could also order to take back to your room. The menu was the same as the buffet used to be. You order off a full menu sheet where the waitress circled what you wanted. In my case it was 2 poached eggs, bacon, homemade corned beef hash, sausage links, hash browns, toast. juice, fruit plate and coffee. The rest of my family ordered everything from French toast, scrambled eggs, pancakes and cereals. We were all socially distanced from other diners. The waitress told us we could order again if we wanted anything else. The dining room recently reopened, but before they did it was the only hotel I visited still offering full breakfast that you ordered in person or by phone to carry back to your room to eat.
Oct 4, 20, 9:41 am
#62
Join Date: Mar 2019
Location: Mexico City
Posts: 1,361
Originally Posted by Global Adventurer
Ok. Here's the breakfast! Made to order. All of this for one person (me). lol
They have omelettes, fried eggs to order, scrambled, potatoes, cinnamon french toast covered in powdered sugar, bagels, a variety of sliced breads, bacon, sausage and other items. I'll try to get some more photos tomorrow. The french toast is very fluffy! Bacon is crispy. They had cranberry, orange and apple juice. Self-service coffee. A variety of yogurts. You just fill out a ppaper menu.
You have a choice of eating in the restaurant or requesting it to go, to take back to your room
They have omelettes, fried eggs to order, scrambled, potatoes, cinnamon french toast covered in powdered sugar, bagels, a variety of sliced breads, bacon, sausage and other items. I'll try to get some more photos tomorrow. The french toast is very fluffy! Bacon is crispy. They had cranberry, orange and apple juice. Self-service coffee. A variety of yogurts. You just fill out a ppaper menu.
You have a choice of eating in the restaurant or requesting it to go, to take back to your room
Below is their grab and go items, which you can take as many as you want to eat in the dining room or take to your room. Their made to order food is the best I've had at any of the Hilton brand hotels since the pandemic.
Oct 4, 20, 10:12 pm
#63
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Join Date: Jan 2005
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Posts: 25,078
Originally Posted by Friendly Traveling Deathmerchant
I was lumping the two back-to-back stays together to make the point that the websites can't be trusted, and there is no standardizations to a COVID-response, even in the same city / state where laws and policies should be uniform: The Tapestry Cassara website still shows "breakfast and On-site Restaurant(s) ARE available, but with "reduced service", and guests get a $20 F&B credit." So that was a surprise when I got the the checkin desk and was told this benefit was just not being given at all, so the definition of "reduced service" was, apparently, 100% reduced. 
They did waive the parking fee, but I was prepared to pay that, and enjoy not having to hunt around for breakfast first thing in the morning. I enjoy good hotel breakfasts. I didn't want to go out, hence booking the Tapestry. I also wanted to use the hot tub, but it was closed, yet the website alert says nothing about that. I was informed that the bike rental that is shown as included in the guest benefits was not included. The website didn't mention that those terms had changed either.
The HGI, I admittedly took a gamble on having breakfast or not. I could have called, yes. I did read it, and as you point out, it says no breakfast. Which could have been just as easily right or wrong, because - my point - is that property-by-property, the website is often in error / not realtime. The night prior's website alert was wrong, so perhaps the HGI was too? I don't remember what their websites said, but I just had breakfast at an HGI in Idaho, and had breakfast a week ago at an HGI in South Dakota, so perhaps this one might have breakfast too? You stop reading warnings when they are often in error. People ignore consistently bad intel.
And it didn't say the business center was not working and that I'd have to do my computer work on my phone, yet there I was, thumbing an iPhone instead of a full sized keyboard, and trying to google "Best breakfast places in San Diego nearby".
They did waive the parking fee, but I was prepared to pay that, and enjoy not having to hunt around for breakfast first thing in the morning. I enjoy good hotel breakfasts. I didn't want to go out, hence booking the Tapestry. I also wanted to use the hot tub, but it was closed, yet the website alert says nothing about that. I was informed that the bike rental that is shown as included in the guest benefits was not included. The website didn't mention that those terms had changed either.The HGI, I admittedly took a gamble on having breakfast or not. I could have called, yes. I did read it, and as you point out, it says no breakfast. Which could have been just as easily right or wrong, because - my point - is that property-by-property, the website is often in error / not realtime. The night prior's website alert was wrong, so perhaps the HGI was too? I don't remember what their websites said, but I just had breakfast at an HGI in Idaho, and had breakfast a week ago at an HGI in South Dakota, so perhaps this one might have breakfast too? You stop reading warnings when they are often in error. People ignore consistently bad intel.
And it didn't say the business center was not working and that I'd have to do my computer work on my phone, yet there I was, thumbing an iPhone instead of a full sized keyboard, and trying to google "Best breakfast places in San Diego nearby".
So just because you found 2 that gave it, does not increase the chances that the next one will have it. Those two HGIs I'm referring to (both in the Lake Forest part of Orange County CA) haven't changed their breakfast policies for months. One has had the breakfast for months, the other one has never had breakfast during Covid, and it's not clear at this point if/when they will.
It's individual hotel owners who are making these decisions, and that's they not that predictable going from one property to the next.
Same with other brands, one Hampton has hot food served by a server behind a desk (though for very limited hours), while all other Hamptons in the same area give pre-made wimpy grab-and-go bags. All of these are phrased as "breakfast: limited" on the website, so for Hampton you either need to reviews somewhere or call them to know whether they're doing more than the bare less-than-minimum.
Oct 4, 20, 10:22 pm
#64
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Join Date: Jan 2005
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Originally Posted by general45
Auburn Maine HGI had a cooked to order FULL breakfast menu served in the restaurant using real plates, cups and cutlery. You could also order to take back to your room. The menu was the same as the buffet used to be. You order off a full menu sheet where the waitress circled what you wanted. In my case it was 2 poached eggs, bacon, homemade corned beef hash, sausage links, hash browns, toast. juice, fruit plate and coffee.
Ie, it may be "full" in terms of what you can order from the chef, but it's not as full of choices of the things that used to be at the buffet. At the typical HGI buffet, you could choose which of various fruits in various bowls to mix to what degree, but this ordering off a "full" menu sheet doesn't give you that option. Nor does it give the option of scooping out however much you want of plain yogurt and then putting your fruit in there; the only yogurt these days tends to be pre-packaged with one fruit or another already pre-mixed.
Oct 5, 20, 1:30 am
#65
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Window Seat
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Posts: 2,009
Originally Posted by sdsearch
If that's a FULL menu, what do you call a menu that's fuller than that?
Ie, it may be "full" in terms of what you can order from the chef, but it's not as full of choices of the things that used to be at the buffet. At the typical HGI buffet, you could choose which of various fruits in various bowls to mix to what degree, but this ordering off a "full" menu sheet doesn't give you that option. Nor does it give the option of scooping out however much you want of plain yogurt and then putting your fruit in there; the only yogurt these days tends to be pre-packaged with one fruit or another already pre-mixed.
Ie, it may be "full" in terms of what you can order from the chef, but it's not as full of choices of the things that used to be at the buffet. At the typical HGI buffet, you could choose which of various fruits in various bowls to mix to what degree, but this ordering off a "full" menu sheet doesn't give you that option. Nor does it give the option of scooping out however much you want of plain yogurt and then putting your fruit in there; the only yogurt these days tends to be pre-packaged with one fruit or another already pre-mixed.
Oct 5, 20, 11:15 pm
#66
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Originally Posted by storewanderer
We will all miss the concept of the buffet. I don't see the concept of the buffet where you get to do this sort of thing yourself, coming back anytime soon. It may work to a degree with an employee serve buffet, but it won't be the same as picking exactly what you want and controlling precisely the portions yourself.
Which is why I was debating the point of calling something without those choices a "full" menu. I realize there are cutbacks now, but I think it's a bit of an overkill to call something within those cutbacks a "full" menu.
Last edited by sdsearch; Oct 5, 20 at 11:22 pm
Oct 6, 20, 9:27 am
#67
Join Date: Mar 2019
Location: Mexico City
Posts: 1,361
Originally Posted by storewanderer
We will all miss the concept of the buffet. I don't see the concept of the buffet where you get to do this sort of thing yourself, coming back anytime soon. It may work to a degree with an employee serve buffet, but it won't be the same as picking exactly what you want and controlling precisely the portions yourself.
Oct 6, 20, 10:45 pm
#68
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Originally Posted by Global Adventurer
The buffets are gone for good in hotels and cruise ships and everything in between.
Second of all, there are some (even if not many) hotels doing inventive things like offering a hot buffet by requiring not just masks but also disposable gloves (which they make available for free at the buffet), and requiring that you take what you get from the buffet back to your room to eat.
Then there are other places where the buffet is there, but a server behind a desk is who gets the food for you (as you request it) from the buffet, rather than you getting yourself. I've seen that both in some midscale-with-complimentary-breakfast hotels (such as a Hampton) and (for salad buffets) in some Whole Foods grocery stores.
So perhaps buffets as we knew them may be gone, but that doesn't mean buffets themselves have to be gone, just reinvented, perhaps.
I can even imagine someone somewhere working right now on a remote-control buffet, where you wave your hands in the air to control robot arms which actually get the food from the buffet onto your plate.
If you don't like buffets at all, no matter what, you can avoid them if you wish.
Oct 8, 20, 12:13 am
#69
Original Member
Join Date: May 1998
Location: The County, Maine
Posts: 817
Originally Posted by sdsearch
If that's a FULL menu, what do you call a menu that's fuller than that?
Ie, it may be "full" in terms of what you can order from the chef, but it's not as full of choices of the things that used to be at the buffet. At the typical HGI buffet, you could choose which of various fruits in various bowls to mix to what degree, but this ordering off a "full" menu sheet doesn't give you that option. Nor does it give the option of scooping out however much you want of plain yogurt and then putting your fruit in there; the only yogurt these days tends to be pre-packaged with one fruit or another already pre-mixed.
Ie, it may be "full" in terms of what you can order from the chef, but it's not as full of choices of the things that used to be at the buffet. At the typical HGI buffet, you could choose which of various fruits in various bowls to mix to what degree, but this ordering off a "full" menu sheet doesn't give you that option. Nor does it give the option of scooping out however much you want of plain yogurt and then putting your fruit in there; the only yogurt these days tends to be pre-packaged with one fruit or another already pre-mixed.
Oct 13, 20, 11:35 am
#71
Join Date: Mar 2019
Location: Mexico City
Posts: 1,361
Originally Posted by tom911
Breakfast at the Hilton Garden Inn in Reno. Not much.
Oct 13, 20, 11:46 am
#72
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This was this morning, Tuesday. Better than the HGI in Denver that had nothing two weeks ago, but not as impressive as the Hampton Inn in nearby Truckee which had cereal choices and bagels.
Oct 13, 20, 6:24 pm
#73
Join Date: Nov 2003
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HGI Riverhead (NY) had full breakfast this weekend, served by the wait staff. The seating capacity was reduced for social distancing. But the wait staff was understaffed which resulted in yooge wait times (weirdly while seated, not waiting for a table), so the third morning of a 3 night stay i threw in the towel and went elsewhere on my own nickel. You would think if mgmt knew i) how many rooms the property had, ii) how many were occupied the night before, and iii) what the capacity of the current seating plan is- they could staff it appropriately.
Oct 14, 20, 12:38 am
#74
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HGI at PDX Airport over the weekend had limited items. I picked an omelet with bacon, cheese, peppers, onions, mushrooms and fried potatoes. It was... fine?
Oct 14, 20, 2:04 am
#75
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Window Seat
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Posts: 2,009
Originally Posted by tom911
Breakfast at the Hilton Garden Inn in Reno. Not much.
