Mid-tier hotel chain breakfast
 

What mid-tier hotel chain offers in your opinion the best breakfast?

Just found this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...breakfast.html

Depends how we define mid-tier. As someone with a lot of Hilton stays, I think the Hilton Garden Inn is the best. As only Golds and Diamonds get it for free, it's usually lightly trafficked and in addition to cold and hot buffet items there's a cooked to order option.

I don't like Embassy Suites because they tend to be mobbed with families and I find the food quality low. Also, Hiltons and Doubletrees vary so wildly on offerings that I again defer to the consistency of the HGI.

I am referring to free breakfast, for everyone. And breakfasts like you get at Denny's or IHOP I consider low quality/uneatable.

Free breakfast for every one -- Hyatt Place ranks best in my experience among mid-price to budget hotels. A lower tier would be Hampton Inn.

You're asking about which hotels give free breakfast to all guests above Denny's/IHOP quality?

The answer is: none.

some may be surprised by types of properties (not just expensive) that offer >

Except that the quote you're referencing does not apply to a free breakfast to all guests.

The Congrad HK provides an amazing, restaurant quality breakfast. And some people can get it for free, but that isn't relevant to the OP's question.

getting it for free, not paying higher rate, by using booking channel available to anyone

there might be chains where its easy for guest to negotiate free breakfast at all locations

The best free breakfasts are correlated to by location, not by chain.

A number of chains have fantastic free breakfast buffets in Scandinavia (because that's the standard there), but the same chains here in the USA will have either rather mediocre/wimpy free breakfast most of the time, or else only paid restaurant breakfast in the USA.

And then there's chains like Best Western Plus where it varies from one property to the next, sometimes tremendously. The Best Western Plus Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel outside the entrance to Bryce Canyon National park has a buffet* that's free-to-all yet resembles what you'd expect at a paid buffet in a an average "full service" hotel (Hilton brand, Marriott brand, Crowne Plaza in the IHG family, etc). But that's only that specific hotel; I've not yet run into another Best Western Plus in the USA with anywhere near as nice a free breakfast for all as the Best Western Plus Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel. (In fact, the Best Western Plus Ruby's Inn across the road has a pathetic breakfast buffet and it isn't even free!)


The best free-to-all breakfast by chain are probably those at all-suites-with-breakfast brands, such as Embassy Suites (Hitlon family), StayBridge Suites (IHG family), Residence Inn (Marriott family), etc. But even those are not as good as the typical Scandinavian breakfast or the buffet at Best Western Plus Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel.

At the not-all-suites brands, the breakfast tends to be a step lower, and not that different between Hampton (Hilton family) and Fairfield (Marriott family), though a bit less variety at Holiday Inn Express (IHG family) compared to those two.


* To see a picture of that buffet, go to http://book.bestwestern.com/bestwest...ertyCode=45082, and to the right of the picture of the hotel you'll see a scroll bar. Scroll to about the middle and you'll find 5 pictures of the "Breakfast Area", the first 3 of which are views of different parts of the buffet.

I have stayed in a lot of US based Hampton Inns, Holiday Inn Expresses and Best Western pluses recently and the free hot breakfast they offer is mostly the same. Usually you get poor quality sausage patties, scrambled or boiled eggs, sometimes bacon, waffles or pancakes, cakes, cereal, fruit, juice, tea and coffee. It is never something I feel I would pay for.

You rarely get anything like eggs/omelets made to order in any of the mid level chains. The food quality in all the free breakfasts is pretty average at best.

It is worth mentioning that the scrambled eggs are invariably 'artificial' - made at a remote location (factory) many moons ago from a commercial, packaged 'egg mix'. Goodness knows what the contents of that mix really is.

If you ask for boiled eggs, you invariably get pre-shelled, cold eggs that are brought out from a fridge. They are real eggs indeed, but how long ago were they boiled / shelled? And who likes eating cold boiled eggs?

Also worth mentioning that it is not only the "mid-range" hotels that serve such sh%# - I once stayed at the Intercontinental in San Francisco (south of Market), where the breakfast buffet had a choice of only factory made omelettes or industrially produced and refrigerated, pre-shelled eggs. And they had the gumption to charge almost $30 for this.

I prefer cold boiled eggs to hot powdered eggs, for sure! :p

Usually, yes, but at the La Quinta Santa Ana, CA (the one on Hotel Terrace), the eggs are unshelled.

And even when you do, while made to order are not from powdered eggs, it's still hard to tell whether they're from whole eggs pre-broken on-site or from commercial liquid eggs mixes. (They're typically pouring from a container into the pan, rather than cracking eggs on the spot.)

Two mid level hotels next to the La Qunita I just mentioned, the Quality Inn next door and the Best Western across the street, have made to order hot breakfasts. The Quality Inn does it in front of you, and includes omelettes as an option. The Best Western does the cooking out of sight and doesn't typically offer omelttes but does ofter a couple styles of cooked eggs.

Of note: All of these hotels are also half a block away from a giant Embassy Suites, which standardly has cooked-to-order omelettes/etc (if you have the time to wait for that one station; they also have a buffet which is much quicker). Most other Best Westerns and most other Quality Inns do not have made-to-order hot eggs.