London Series: Breakfast at the Sheraton Skyline

I told you I’ll blog about food today … here it is. :-)

I stayed in the Sheraton Skyline Hotel in Hayes, just next to the Heathrow Airport. This is very much a business class hotel with very little tourist. It seems to me that people who stays here are very much people who works for the airport or aviation industry.

I had some of my breakfasts in the hotel’s Al Dente Cafe.

The cafe is very spacious, bright and cheery. I don’t know … to me this makes a difference in setting the day right. I always wanted to have an unrushed morning breakfast in a bright place and a newspaper to catch up on the news. And like to have breakfast alone … hate people talking to me during breakfasts! :-) So this is perfect.

Service was excellent in the Al Dente Cafe — very prompt and polite. Somehow I wish every place is like this. I noticed that service is much better in such business hotels in that people dresses better and the customers are working professionals. Also, perhaps these type of customers tip better because they could expense the tips. I don’t know …

First came with a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice. The coffee is really strong and smells good. A characteristic of a good cup espresso coffee is the layer of crema … and this has it. It’s a big cup too. Fantastic.

The breakfast is buffet style. There was a very wide selection and simply too much for anyone to try everything. I had always liked cooked and warm breakfast. This is just what I wanted. Like many good breakfast spread, they even have a station where they prepare omelette the way you want it.

In North America, the standard condiment is ketchup. I noticed that in England they almost always have both ketchup and mustard. I am no fan of mustard but took a bottle anyway to try and see if I like it … I did not. Can anyone tell me more about using mustard as a condiment? i.e. do you use it like you do with ketchup on meat and eggs?

The only time I know people in Vancouver normally use mustard is on hotdogs.

I like this station where there are all kinds of English tea. There is even a pot of hot water of some sort that you use to make a pot for yourself. It was pretty neat … the pot was steaming all the time and looked very inviting.

Let’s see … there is a place where you can toast your own bread … I always like that. It also came with a full rack of variety of jams and marmalades. For drinks too, they have milk, Perrier, all kinds of juices, and soft drinks.

I don’t normally eat a lot in breakfast. I took a bit of stuff from the cold selection. Had a couple of slices of cold smoked salmon — it was OK. Tried also a little bit of the crisp bacon but it was awfully salty. I wondered how people like it so salty — it was as salty as trying to eat a spoonful of salt, no kidding. I also tried, for the heck of it, some cheese, especially blue cheese … this one I did not like.

What I like best is their yogurt — this was awesome. It seems to me that they are made fresh because the foil that covers it is not those airtight ones and the strawberries tasted like they were just prepared a moment ago. It was so good I took another.

There was another table of pastry … very nice pastries. I did not take any at all because I was full.

The breakfast was great and the atmosphere is perfect. I normally spend about 45 minutes here, taking my sweet time reading the papers. The downside is that this costs 19 GBP … and that is $43 CAD, excluding tips!! Good thing there’s a thing called expense account.

London is an expensive city.

BTW, I am gonna blog about food again tomorrow … promise. No more museums, tanks, cameras … at least for the next few days. :-)