We need to get rid of the great British breakfast and embrace matcha green tea lattes, even if they do taste like grassy milkshakes

Nothing makes me crave home more than a hotel breakfast, especially a hotel buffet breakfast where bacon rashers in stainless steel troughs toughen their sinews under bright lights, eggs swim in oil and everything is splattered with baked bean juice.

I think the only people who really get a kick out of buffet breakfasts are small children who cannot believe that they are allowed to pile sausages on top of cake, most of which ends up being squashed into the carpet.

This is why hotel breakfast rooms have such vivid carpets: the pattern needs to withstand a daily Jackson Pollocking of breakfast goods. In fact, I’m surprised most hotels haven’t given up on carpets altogether and gone for something they can simply hose down before lunch.

Now, apart from those flashier gaffs that have a resident omelette chef on standby, complete with high, starchy hat and an under-the-counter bucket of bacon bits, smaller hotels tend to be better on the cook-to-order front.

This is where you will spot kippers, French toast and “smashed avo”, but the choice will vary depending on where you are, and obviously you want to be wary of fish when you’re miles from the coast.

Bewilderingly, in some parts of the country, the avocado is still treated like a semi-precious vegetable, whereas white pepper, which no one has used in 30 years, is still present on every breakfast table in the land.

Yup, the old-fashioned cruet is weirdly omnipresent, while the boiled egg cup is increasingly disappearing. Seriously, in the past few years I have had them served rolling free and wrapped up in napkins as well as perched in shot glasses.

Occasionally hotels will give a nod to the continent and offer a small selection of sliced cheese, ham and salmon. This is when I perk up a bit and start ferreting around for pumpernickel (to no avail) and, like the squirrel in my back garden who has started turning up her nose at everything that isn’t sourdough, I slink off in disgust.

I once stayed in a hotel in Oslo where they made their own sesame crackers, crackers I have dreamt about on several occasions since. Mind you, I also caught bedbugs from that hotel, so swings and roundabouts!

Odd, isn’t it, that we are a nation addicted to watching cooking programmes on the television and yet in 2018 grown adults in the UK are still devouring little boxes of Cheerios first thing in the morning?

I genuinely think there are middle-aged businessmen who, stuck in a hotel on a roundabout just outside of Nuneaton, are hoping to find a toy in their cereal bowl – and who can blame them? Life as an adult can be really boring; how much more fun would it be to go into an important business meeting secure in the knowledge that, in your pocket, you have a tiny plastic toy that no one else knows about (ha, the suckers)?

So while I really don’t want to deny anyone the pleasure of sinking their crooked British teeth into a soggy piece of buttered white toast slathered all over with bright red jam (a classic), I have to say that these days I’m very pleased whenever I see something new on the breakfast menu.

Case in point: at a certain upmarket boutique hotel chain (where the rooms have names, not numbers) is the appearance of the “chia seed pudding”. This is a particularly offputting, grey, frog-spawny-looking dish beloved of vegans, as it’s often made with non-dairy milks.

I’m really tentative about this new sweeping craze of veganism but at the same time, I’m grateful for anything that changes the face of the great British breakfast – because, of course, it’s not great: it’s a massive coronary on a plate.

Granted, I’ve tried matcha green tea latte and found it like a tasted like a grassy milkshake, but I’m glad to see its fresh, green, frothy face anyway, because I’m sick to death of dreary hotel room trays sporting three sachets of Tetley’s and a shortbread finger.

Nothing seems more resistant to change in this country than breakfast. We happily experiment with our lunches and eat around the globe for supper, but our breakfasts, by comparison, are stuck in a terrible rut. We really haven’t welcomed anything new since we accepted the pastry basket from France.

So come on, kitchens, catch me out – tickle my early morning tastebuds. Bring me your Norwegian brown cheese, your Venezuelan-style grilled chorizo; treat me to halloumi fries with harrissa yoghurt; shakshuka me some eggs; or just grab your leftovers and do us a rip-roaring bubble and squeak.

Please, I beg you, astound me – go full-on Masterchef finals, and do what you can to make me crave Cornflakes again.

Next week: foyer and corridor art and floral reception arrangements, including the madness of silk tulips when it’s April and you can get bunches of the real thing for a fiver.