The best hotel breakfast in California is at this SLO County spot, website says
An independent lodge in San Luis Obispo County has the best hotel breakfast in the state, according to a British website.
The Cambria Pines Lodge got the California title, based in part on the “2,008 glowing reviews” its complimentary breakfasts received on Tripadvisor, said the ratings site mornings.co.uk.
As the website opined, “It’s the one thing that can drag you out of a hotel-perfect bed before you’re fully awake: a perfect hotel breakfast.”
While some hoteliers have cut back or abandoned their morning meals for guests, due to costs and pandemic guidelines for public health, others have found ways around the problem so they can continue dishing up a.m. cuisine that sets them apart from their competitors.
The website report listed the top hotel breakfasts in every U.S. state. While many of those meals were at chain hotels, the offerings from independents in some other states also were dubbed best of the best.
The site also has a list of the best hotel breakfasts in every capital city around the world. The No. 1 spot on that list, with a whopping 5,363 top reviews online, was the morning meal served at Park Plaza Westminister Bridge in London.
No U.S. hotel made the top 10 on the worldwide list, which included two other sites in the U.K., two each in Thailand and Malaysia, and one each in Italy, Hungary and the Bahamas.
What was on the menu at the Cambria Pines Lodge
To do justice to the Lodge’s recent honor, The Tribune decided to check to see what was on the menu for guests.
On Saturday, Jan. 8 — a quieter weekend between the year-end holidays and the Martin Luther King Day weekend — a steady stream of Lodge guests gathered to enjoy the extensive breakfast buffet.
Various stations provided enough selections to fill nearly every appetite. The main menu changes occasionally, according to the servers.
That day, the selections included scrambled eggs (with or without bell peppers), salsa, home-fried potatoes, hot biscuits, gravy, fat link sausages, blueberry muffins, toast and oatmeal with all the accoutrements.
Nearby, another station was stocked with coffees, milks, yogurt, cold cereals and fruit toppers, as well as a large sideboard loaded with whole fresh fruits and big dispensers of juice.
Yes, something for just about everybody … except maybe the 8-year-old who was looking forward to the usual hotel-breakfast excitement of making their own waffle.
How the website ranked hotel breakfasts
According to the website, survey data were compiled in September 2021 using “Tripadvisor’s search function by keywords and location on the ‘Hotel’ tab. We used three search terms (‘best breakfast,’ ‘great breakfast’ and ‘excellent breakfast’) and searched them in every capital city and in every U.S. state. We extracted the number of mentions for each term for each hotel and then ranked them by the combined mentions across all three terms.”
The site added, “We mapped the best ones. Because when 5,000 people recommend a hotel breakfast, it’s probably worth the journey.”
The site, which bills itself as the “U.K. guide to sleeping better for better mornings,” also provides sleep tips and guidance on “the best mattresses, pillows and beds,” plus linens and covers, mattress toppers and even “the best bedframe for a heavy person.”
This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 9:00 AM.
