A hotel kitchen employee at a limited-service property walks through how she makes eggs at breakfast – placing a sealed commercial bag of yellow, pre-blended egg mixture in a microwave. Once heated, the contents become a solid, rubbery-looking slab. She cuts open the bag, dumps the slab into a buffet pan and breaks it apart with a wire masher until it resembles scrambled eggs.
There are no shells, skillet, butter or seasoning to add. This is a bulk food service egg product that’s probably pasteurized liquid whole egg or precooked scrambled egg formulated for reheating. Her video says,
“Make hotel scrambled eggs with me!! (You might never want them again).”
@indiicalover
Here’s a good discussion amongst hotel workers about actually making the eggs. Reactions generally fall along the lines of:
- Disgust: What on earth is that? Ruined my appetite! And ‘they taste like they’re made exactly like that.’
- Lack of surprise: “I never actually thought someone was back there scrambling hundreds of eggs.” “Gimme some ketchup and I’ll eat that whole slab” “I DON’T CARE. Give me my free hotel breakfast.”
If you look like you belong – reasonably well-groomed and confident – at many limited-service hotels that offer free breakfast to everyone you can just walk in and have breakfast, whether you’re staying there or not. But would you even want to?
When I stay at Hyatt Place hotels I usually skip breakfast. It’s not that I won’t be hungry, it’s that I’m often not hungry for the food on offer. Maybe the fruit is fine, but there’s nothing appealing about the eggs. (Honestly, the Hyatt Place breakfast used to be much better 15 years ago.)
I love a good, freshly-prepared hot breakfast rather than a buffet, unless it’s an especially high-end buffet. Even better are hotels that honor their frequent guest breakfast benefit as room service! But when it comes to these freebies at lower-end hotels, I’d even rather something from Starbucks.
Marriott drove a 20% cost reduction for breakfast across four of its brands. Climate goals are being used as a smokescreen to drive down cost.
And it’s not just free breakfasts where hotels are looking to drive down costs. Holiday Inn, for instance, eliminated a la carte restaurant breakfast leaning into buffets build around reused pastries.
What is this, an episode of “How It’s Made”… do sausage next, Gary!
It’s why I eat the waffles.
Finally, making the Egg Mc Muffin look like a gourmet breakfast!
It’s eggs. Relax.
At limited service hotels I always just get a boiled egg or 2 instead of that mess they call scrambled eggs. Unless I know they are “real” eggs cooked to order I don’t touch them.
The only eggs I’ll eat at hotels are hard-boiled. Coffee, juice, and yoghurt are hard to mess up.
To be fair, I don’t expect much from a Fairfield, Hyatt Place or Best Western. I think, on the whole, Holiday Inn Express properties tend to have the best and most consistent buffet offering among these chains. The brand-standard egg white omelet is more than edible. They also generally have Greek yogurt, unlike the Marriott and Hyatt limited-service properties.
Holiday Inn ruined itself by switching to buffets because the average buffet offering is worse than the Holiday Inn Express, where all guests get “free” breakfast.
I do agree that, in general, a microwaved breakfast sandwich at Starbucks is better than whatever these hotels are offering on the buffet. The coffee tends to be better too, at least the Starbucks blonde roast.
GROSS. We have TOO MUCH Processed food. Is it any wonder we Americans have some of the highest cancer rates of any nation. Hotel breakfasts in Europe put the hotel breakfasts in America to shame.
Nowadays when I grocery shop, I need to read labels searching for the disclosure of “BIOENGINEERED food ingredients. Bioengineered = FAKE FOOD I refuse to buy.
I have no problem with the eggs; it’s the canned fruit in corn syrup that I dislike at Hyatt Places.
I only eat scrambled eggs when I’m at a hotel, and I love them!
I can’t eat fake eggs. If they aren’t making it fresh for me where I can watch them crack the eggs, I stick to boiled.
Except in other countries where they serve real food not frankenfood.
@OnePatriot77 — You in-to that “raw” milk? Talk about EXPLOSIVE diarrhea!
@Matt — For authentic scrambled eggs made from scratch, every day, just for you, please consider Delta SkyClub. (@L737, I doubt it’s him, but…)
What’s the big deal? I microwave liquid egg whites at home for breakfast every day. Is there something special about putting oil in a pan and cooking them on a stove? Wayyy healthier to not add oil.
What a bunch of nonsense being spewed by some about “processed” eggs. I sure hope they have been processed by pasteurization!
@1990 in NYC. I don’t normally see raw milk for sale here in Los Angeles.
Instead, I drink the pricy organic milk.
Years ago I considered organic foods to be a scam but I was wrong.
I now require certain foods like apples to be organic.
Non-organic apples have food coloring, and other additives like carnuba wax AKA car wax!
We’re all being poisoned with chemicals in our food.
Check the labels on your favorite foods!.
@OnePatriot77 — Raw-milk may be one of the best examples of the ‘horseshoe theory’ of politics. It’s fans include hipsters in Williamsburg and trad-wives in Utah. Wild. (Lately, I’ve learned to enjoy my coffee black. Rest assured, I’m not consuming any of the various nut-milks!)
Why I don’t bother other then free coffee from standard hotel breakfast like that. Take McDonald’s breakfast any-day over that.
So what is this story about? Nothing new at all.
I only order fresh eggs, and mostly poached anyway
@59Impala — “So what is this story about? Nothing new at all.” Copy-and-paste that in about 7 out of 10 posts here, and you wouldn’t be too far off. Psh.
I refuse to eat these, they are disgustingly!
It’s kinda what I expected.
We use the finest forever chemicals in our fake microwaved eggs
While our eggs will last forever unfortunately you will not
Yes, so-called breakfast at US hotels is gross. GROSS.
When I travel in SE Asia I think about how gross US hotel breakfasts are as I dine on fresh fruit, fresh juice, noodles, rice, pork ribs, fish, pastries, cheese, salad, etc etc and eggs made anyway you like. No microwaved eggs or mealy apples wrapped in plastic or frozen waffles that only the kids are happy to see. Yeah, in SE Asia labor is less, food costs are less, etc etc, but at least the hotels give a shit about service and customers.
I too am not surprised and don’t mind it.
@1990 — can always count on a Delta SkyClub to have a thoughtful and elevated level of eggs!
When I make scrambled eggs at home, I crack the eggs in a bowl and use my nose to detect any that are not good. Then I take a fork and make sure that they are fully mixed, yolk and white. After I cook in the microwave, taking them out to mash them part way through cooking. I like them a bit liquid and mostly solid but always fork mashed before plating. Not a whole lot different than in the video except the ones in the video are completely solidified. I like that some people forego the scrambled eggs in the video because it leaves more for the people that appreciate them.
This really isn’t that far off the popular camping method of putting eggs in a ziplock bag, scramble them by shaking, and then putting the bag in boiling water. Is it gourmet? No but works great.
And we used the pasteurized eggs for years at fundraising breakfasts, they are 100% real eggs, just scrambled and packaged in liquid form. We baked them rather than microwave them, and a chef taught us the key tricks for seasoning and keeping them moist. And if you pour into a pan they make fantastic omelets
@jns @Tyrone G Bravo! I microwave them in a bowl then dump them as a layer of an egg/bacon/cheese panini on a ciabatta roll.
Anyone who knows anything knows you never order or eat scrambled eggs at these places as they are fake eggs. Same for places like Denny’s. Get them over med or something where they have to actually break a shell.
Why the heck are people upset here. The product is almost certainly eggs, maybe with salt, spices, etc. Is microwaving a gourmet approach? He’ll no, but it’s perfectly safe. We all know what those buffet scrambled eggs taste like. Nothing unsafe or unhealthy was involved. If they tasted the same, but were cooked like you do at home, would your enjoyment be greater? Grow up.
I didn’t see any mention of the actual “egg content” of the limited service hotel’s “scrambled eggs.” Some estimates that I’ve seen, estimate that the actual “egg” in the “scrambled eggs” is about 40% egg, and 60% filler and non-egg product. GROSS!
@jns — The ‘nose test’ is literally how our ancestors lived and died by. I’d say, you take a whiff, and go “ooof,” that’s a nope for me, dawg.
Where can I get those unscrambled eggs? I love them!!!
Totally fine for me!
Honestly, I find people reacting to this pretty perplexing.
You need to feed 100 people breakfast at a Hampton, three eggs apiece.
You aren’t having someone spending whatever amount of time cracking 25 dozen eggs, disposing the shells and cartons, scrambling the eggs and then cooking them.
There is just no way to spend that much time and manpower doing it. There is one, maybe two people working breakfast at most of these places.
How would they have the time to do that? They often have to struggle as it is with being short staffed and overworked. Asking them to start from scratch is unrealistic.
Holiday Inn Express continues its bold tradition of serving what can only be described as fetal chicken and pancakes for breakfast at most locations in the United States—because nothing says ‘rise and shine’ like a combo of unborn poultry and syrupy carbs.
Never underestimate the appeal of free food.
People will eat anything if they don’t have to pay for it.
It’s pretty disgusting. Especially if you’ve worked on the other side of the kitchen door.