Breakfast in the United States works a bit different than in Germany. Food options and variety differ but and food is prepared differently. Many hotels offer Continental Breakfast.
Breakfast in the United States: Hot, Fried Breakfast
A standard US breakfast is hot: that usually means sweat and salty meals but definitely entire meals. Some examples:
French Toast: Toast in scrambled eggs, fried with maple syrup, sugar and a whipped cream
Omelet: made of eggs or only egg white with mixed fried vegetables, or ham and cheese – all kinds of combinations and ingredients are possible
American pancakes: a bit thicker than our pancakes, usually with sweet toppings such as chocolate sprinkles, sweet creams, blueberries etc.
Waffles: with sugar, maple syrup, cream, powder sugar, etc.
Ham or Bacon: fried
Eggs: scrambled or boiled
little sausages: a bit like our little white barbecue sausages
hash brown: a kind of potato pancake
toasted sandwiches with all kinds of toppings (ham, cheese, vegetables, tomatoes, mozzarella, etc.) similar to Panini
All these meals have one thing in common: they are all very heavy, lots of fat and calories. It’s all fried, made in pans and very filling. To me, these meals are even enough as dinner. It is usually possible to order all of them all day long.
Because these are all full meals, many restaurants sell them all day long. Rules of these breakfast restaurants are the same as dinner rules (Don’t forget to tip your waiter!)
You can also order single items, like bagels, muffins, cookies. But in breakfast restaurants you usually choose an entire meal.
Continental Breakfast in the Hotel: A Buffet with many Baked Goods
When we were booking our hotels, we were always told that in the US breakfast is not included in the hotels. Breakfast is some kind of extra service. In the hotels, this was a bit different. Most hotels offer a small breakfast buffet that always follows the same pattern.
They have many baked goods like muffins, donuts, bagels and cookies. There is also a juice machine usually with orange juice and cranberry juice in it. Coffee is in a thermos jug, hot water for tea as well. They have two hot plates, one with scrambled eggs in it, sometimes the other one with little sausages and bacon in it. Then there is a waffle iron, and a machine with readymade waffle dough in it. You fill that dough in a cup, then into the waffle iron, turn the iron and wait for 2 minutes (automated timer). When the waffle machine beeps something is wrong and it beeps a lot because people cannot really handle it. Usually, the buffet has some yoghurt and some vegetables (apples and bananas). They also have 3 – 4 different kinds of Cereals. Last but not least : oat meal powder, cocoa powder, jam, nutella, butter, margarine. And definitely at least five kinds of sugar (including artificial sweetener).
This is the standard hotel buffet, usually included in the overnight rate. It’s called continental breakfast. It’s not a fancy gourmet buffet but I found enough and did not need to leave hungry. A bit unusual to us is the fact that they only use plastic dishes: Plastic plates, spoons, folks, knifes cup. Everything is plastic or Styrofoam (coffee cups). Hotels guests take their food, eat and after that throw their dishes in the trash. No one needs to do the dishes, clean the tables or do anything else. I only saw one person working at the buffet.
All that plastic litter is something we needed to get used to. When you try to count the amount of trash this creates in a year, it becomes painful. But I don’t know what to do about that. You can only go to the restaurant in order to avoid all the waste of plastic. I hope they develop an environmental conscience about that soon but I’m not so sure about that.
Something in the end: Hotels very often have a sign that says “hot breakfast”. That usually only means that they have scrambled eggs, waffles and bacon. Nothing else.
What’s Better?
The hotel buffets are filling, sufficient and taste good. It’s not a big luxury; it’s not really enjoyable to eat with plastic dishes. But I can adjust to that. I prefer these buffets. These meals I described above are too heavy for me, they make me lazy all day long and are simply too much. Nevertheless, they taste delicious and are really very good. I would recommend going to a breakfast restaurant and try one of these meals at least once. Maybe at the first half of your tour, if you like it you can go again.
Most hotels offer these breakfast buffets. When we were there, only hotels in the “very cool” cities like Miami, New York and New Orleans did not have any included breakfast at all. These hotels usually have their own restaurant or the reception can tell you where to find a good one. In these cities you only need to walk a few steps and will probably find something.
Some of the big chain restaurants are: Ihop, Five Guys, Dennys, Pancake House, Waffle House (see Article on Waffle House) etc. If you cannot find anything else, look for these places. They always have breakfast.