Eva Chen is not just Instagram’s director of fashion partnerships; she is also a blazing food rebel. In a recent interview with New York magazine’s Grub Street, she admits drinking matcha tea so thick that it is “almost like a paste” and eating old fruit roll-ups covered in Post-it notes and lint.
But it is her attitude to hotel breakfast buffets that has really made a splash. Not only does Chen set out strict instructions about what should and should not be eaten – “When people get a bowl of cereal like Cheerios, I’m like, don’t you have Cheerios at home? Why wouldn’t you get the freshly made crepe?” – she also brazenly outs herself as a pilferer. “I got some dried apple chips to go,” she writes, before adding: “Really advanced aficionados of the breakfast buffet will bring a Ziploc bag and smuggle food out.”
So is she right? Should we all be smuggling extra food from our hotel buffets? If you paid for the room, and breakfast is included, does that give you carte blanche to take as much food as you can?
It is a knotty question, and a mainstay of travel forums. One incredible Mumsnet thread on this subject from a decade ago quickly descended into a Brexit-style stalemate between the gluttons (“I decanted apple juice at a breakfast buffet … to stop food waste”) and the slightly racist law-abiders (“When I was in Egypt last year ‘ze Germans’ kept doing this all the time AND THEY WERE ALWAYS CAUGHT AND HUMILIATED”).
Personally, I have some sympathy with the gluttons – within reason. Yes, a hotel is a business, and if everyone took twice as much food as they needed then room prices would inevitably go up. And yes, Eva Chen’s Ziploc advocacy does smack a little of Alan Partridge sneaking a slightly bigger plate into the buffet every morning.
But at the same time, where is your spirit of adventure? A breakfast buffet is not just a place for you to eat; it is an epic game of cat-and-mouse between you and the hotel. The hotel always goes first, by offering comically minuscule glasses to pour your fruit juice into. So when I see people retaliating, loading their pockets with rolls and satsumas, and doing a runner when the waiter is restocking the bread board, I do feel for them.
Look, nobody ever approaches a buffet without secretly wanting to eat so much food that the hotel goes bankrupt and out of business. At the very least, you want to eat so much that the hotel gives up and reverts to a menu-based breakfast. Anyone can eat breakfast. But ruining an entire hotel’s profit margin thanks to an unearned sense of greedy spite? That’s a hero’s work.
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