We stayed at the Hyatt Hotel Canberra for five nights in November and part of the deal included free buffet breakfast every morning at the hotel. We ate breakfast at the buffet on three mornings. Two of those mornings were the two days of my conference, when we didn’t have time to go out to breakfast. The third morning was on our last day in Canberra. It wasn’t just convenient for us to have breakfast at the hotel – it was a very pleasant and delicious way to start the day.

One of the things I love about eating at hotel buffets is the appearance of Beerenberg mini jams, honey and sauces. I just love the mini jars. Any of you love mini food too?

Jac started with a little slice of cheese and cold meats, followed by bacon, scrambled eggs and mushrooms.

She moved on to smoked salmon, capers, red onion, feta cheese and fresh bread.

And then, fresh fruit – kiwi, pineapple and watermelon – and stewed plums.

I went straight to the hot buffet dishes and assembled a breakfast fry-up of bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage, baked beans, tomato, mushroom and hash browns.

Jac immediately got in line to order an omelette for us to share, while I ate some melon and a small strawberry and custard danish.

Our omelette was filled with a bit of everything – ham, capsicum, mushrooms, spring onion, a little cheese. It smelled wonderful.

It was delicious!

Jac assembled a little plate of bread, butter and cheese for herself. Every morning, we were served little dishes of soft butter that we spread on slices of fresh crusty bread. My throat was probably at its sorest this morning (this was the morning I ate the room service ice cream at 6.40am), so I didn’t eat as much as I did at breakfast the previous morning.

I asked the egg chef to fry me an egg sunny-side up, which I ate with bacon, mushrooms, baked beans and a hash brown. Unfortunately, he broke my egg yolk in the process of frying the egg. Luckily, it was still soft and gooey and tasted delicious with freshly cracked black pepper.

Jac grabbed herself mushrooms, tomato and sausage. She got the egg chef to fry her an egg over easy. She made herself a couple of slices of toast and got some bacon…

…and proceeded to assemble a bacon and egg sandwich for herself. It did look very good!

The maitre’d, David, was on duty every morning of our stay. On our final morning he commented (not in a rude way) on my apparent obsession with photographing everything we ate, so Jac gave him the “proud partner of a food blogger” spiel (it’s sweet but kind of embarrassing) and told him about my blog and our love of food. He suggested we give the gluten-free organic muesli a try, so we shared a bowl. I must admit I would never eat muesli (or any cereals) from a buffet loaded with savoury hot food, but the muesli was surprisingly good. It was full of dried fruit, nuts and seeds and was sweet yet savoury at the same time. I poured only enough milk onto the muesli to moisten it – I don’t like drowning my cereal in milk.