You have endured the airport terminals and the delayed journey. You have had a fitful night's sleep on sheets stiff with cheap bleach, watching something dark and hideous crouching by the skirting board. At daybreak you realise that the squatting creature is one of your all-terrain activity sandals. This serves you right for buying them in the first place. Women are either too old or too young for activity sandals; there is no middle ground for this ugly sister of the shoe world. However, when it comes to negotiating the badlands of the hotel buffet breakfast, the activity sandal is as vital a part of your holiday armoury as a cold, cold heart and a big, big tray.
The rules of engagement for the buffet breakfast are exactly the same as for the buffet lunch, the buffet dinner, the wedding buffet, the baby shower finger sandwich buffet, the poolside barbecue buffet, the after-show party, the dinner-party buffet, the burger-bar salad counter, the dreaded jazz brunch and the Sunday carvery at the village pub. Rule number one: Don't go. To any of them.
Rule two. Starve instead. I mean it. Retire to your room with an apple, a glass of boiled water and the sure knowledge that you are not going to die by consuming unstable hollandaise in the eggs Benedict. Or by the consumption of lettuce leaves that have been pawed by every filthy mitt in the hotel, from the kitchen porter with the hacking cough to the toddler with the leaking nappy. Surely a nice, sealed packet of mini-bar peanuts is preferable to the plague-pit horror of self-service breakfasts? Not to mention the turf wars that ensue when there's only one sausage and a basin of damp cornflakes left? There Will Be Blood Oranges. But only if you're up at dawn to snaffle them. No Country Ham for Old Men. All gone by the time the dozy seniors shuffle hopefully towards the Continental counter.
Rule three. If none of the above is an option, and you feel that you must eat - plus you are paying half-board and the Euro is a killer right now! - then consider the following. Firstly, buffeteers must remember that it is the all-for-one part of the motto that counts here, not the useless one for all (which only applies to the bill). A good tip is to always use the sporting tactics traditionally favoured by the Arsenal back four; get in early and get in hard. Don't worry about raking the shins of someone from Liverpool who happens to be in front you. And don't be the person so pathetically grateful to grab the last cheesy baked potato that they spend the rest of the evening nursing it, like a sick pet. Be prepared. Be punctual. Be buffet aware that now is your chance to use those unsightly rubber soles to spring from Soups'n'Salads to Hot Puds like a hungry gazelle.
Be selective. Be very, very selective. Free from the written strictures of a menu, hotels don't have to describe or explain what they are giving you to eat, so the provenance of hotel buffet food is always a murky area. Just like there is counterfeit quality Louis Vuitton handbags, there is buffet quality food. Chefs know to buy it in cheap from shady suppliers who know just where to track down the glaucomous fried eggs, the bone-in bacon and the mossy baked beans that form the centrepiece of hotel buffet breakfasts from Skegness to Skorpios.
Dinners are no better. Really. When is there a moment in life when even the hungriest person thinks, mmm, what I really fancy in the vegetable line is some watery sweetcorn with a big pile of Vichy carrots and chopped beetroot alongside. Yet this is invariably the default trio selection you will find; alongside a vat of cabbage that no one ever touches and the grey stump of some indeterminate animal sitting on a bed of spikes, surrounded by greasy gravy. No creature deserves such a fate. And neither do you.
Remember that the food served at a bad buffet is like the rubbish dishes at a work canteen, only worse. At least employers have a vested interest in their customers being upright and productive after meals. Hotels? They don't mind if you are crashed out under an oxygen tent for a week, as it will save on their room cleaning rota. If, for the rest of your holiday, the only thing boiled in the bag to come near your lips is a saline drip, what do they care? So always beware any close encounter with the gammon and pineapple or the rows of sole Veronique the more unscrupulous hotels like to pile up on their budget buffet trays. They won't live to regret it, but you might. Omelette and upwards.
· Read Jan Moir's restaurant reviews at areyoureadytoorder.co.uk
Three restaurants for a really great buffet
The Torridon Hotel
Torridon, by Achnasheen, Wester Ross, Scotland
01445 791242
The normal buffet rules don't apply in this lovely, romantic and remote Highland hotel. They even have their own cow, so you won't have to have one if the breakfast toast is cold.
Rick Stein, Padstow, Cornwall
Details on rickstein.com
01841 532700
Enter Steinworld by staying in style at the cool and spacious St Edmunds House, then walking down the lane to have a lovely breakfast at the famous Seafood Restaurant. Lots of lovely fresh produce from Stein's various outlets in Padstow.
Alfonso XIII Hotel
Seville, Spain
0034 95 4917000
It's worth staying in this grand old hotel just for the breakfast. Everything you ever wanted to eat, plus your own tortilla chef who will whip up your tailor-made Spanish at a little cooker in the dining room. The breakfast buffet to end them all.
· These restaurants and hundreds more are on Jan's restaurant website areyoureadytoorder.co.uk
