Of all the thousands of decisions to make on designing a boutique hotel in Chania, breakfast was, and remains, one of the most challenging. Not that “boutique hotel in Chania” exactly describes us – indeed the word “hotel” was banned from the construction site as we aimed to produce something more like a home – but perhaps we digress…
Anyway, people do label us boutique and as we are small, rather beautiful and little quirky the name fits. So should our breakfast follow and be small, beautiful and quirky? Well, my colleague Alexandra’s natural generosity precludes “small” so petite breakfasts are out. Beautiful is de rigeur and we start off with white tablecloths, add fine china from Villeroy & Boch with the occasional splash of Meissen, and work up from there; Quirky is an interesting thought as people like the occasional adventure, though breakfast, as the starting point on which you build the whole day, should provide a stable base and not be flighty.
So for a stable base we decided to flatter the Ritz in London with our imitation and went for a classical Continental Breakfast of croissants, bread basket, toast, jams, honey (thyme, of course), Greek yoghurt, fresh orange juice and the best teas and coffees. To add weight to the stable base we added what most people might be used to from home – cheese and charcuterie for some nations, eggs any way for others plus a fine English breakfast, French toast with cinnamon syrup, etc – and then for a touch of quirky and a fit with both our location and our name we added menemem (Turkish scrambled eggs) and Cretan omelette made to our own recipe. And not forgetting simple luxury – that marriage made in heaven of scrambled eggs with smoked salmon – fluffy, buttery, wicked, mmmmm….And of course, if sir or madam wants salad or boiled greens or pancakes they get just that.
So the perfect breakfast for what may be the best boutique hotel in Chania turns out to be what you expect and what you don’t, what you are used to and what is new… but hopefully, just what you wanted whether you knew it or not… perhaps like la Maison Ottomane…
