Tuesday, October 11, 2016

UBB

Like I mentioned yesterday, we were in Chicago for hockey last weekend, and we went down to the hotel buffet Sunday morning.

Occasionally, when we're feeling particularly regal, we will order off the menu instead of getting the buffet.

I had my eye on some mini-waffles that were not available in the buffet, so I ordered them off the menu, along with a side of bacon.

When the bacon arrived, it looked absolutely delicious, with exactly the right amount of crisp.

"Hey, you need to try a piece of this bacon," I said, nodding to the plate that had just been delivered.

Eli 15.2, a big fan of bacon, nodded and took a piece. We both roughly took a bite of our respective pieces of bacon at the same time.

"Ugh," I said.

"That's just--not," Eli said.

"What kind of carcass did they get this from?" I asked, and Eli started laughing.

"Man, that looked like real bacon," I said, "not Universal Buffet Bacon."

"That's it!" Eli said. "It tastes exactly the same."

And so it did.

If you eat at enough hotels in the hockey hotel class, you'll eat at many, many breakfast buffets. And even though this hotels are owned by many different companies, their bacon all tastes exactly the same.

Good bacon has a sweet note, a lightness. Universal Buffet Bacon, in contrast, has multiple bitter notes and a harsh, almost burned, flavor, even if it looks perfectly done.

What's so distinct about this bacon is that I've never tasted it anywhere but in a hotel buffet. Not once in a standalone restaurant, not in my entire life, has bacon ever tasted like it does in a hotel lobby.

The mini-waffles, however, were excellent.

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