All-you-can-eat breakfast buffets remind me of being overzealous on family vacations, filling my plate with unlimited amounts of sugar: waffles with Nutella, Fruit Loops, cantaloupe, strawberry yogurt. Later, with a full belly, I’d grab a lounge chair and jump into a glassy pool or the fresh ocean in the late morning.
Oftentimes we’d go to Mexico — Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun — to fill up on sugar and participate in kitschy pool games or go snorkeling in the sea. For a six year old, it was sensory overload in all the best ways.
Veranda at The Hotel Del taps into those poignant childhood memories, serving up classic American fare while elevating the morning buffet into a polished, coastal experience.
For $52, hotel guests and outside visitors can eat from a menu featuring classic items such as fluffy eggs, bacon, a yogurt bar and bagels, but also elegant touches like crème anglaise and sun-dried blueberry bread pudding, salmon lox, coconut chia pudding and warm cinnamon rolls, among others.
The restaurant is inspired by the wraparound veranda that was once part of The Del. The “al fresco” restaurant, which means eating or spending time outdoors, features a coastal breeze that never seems to get old. The quintessential checkered chairs give a bistro feeling, but on the shore instead of in a French city. When I ate there at 10 a.m., the sea breeze seemed to bring life’s chaos to a stop.
Where I usually go wrong with buffets, especially upscale ones, is in the category of ambition: Scanning the buffet line, I could feel my heart racing trying to decipher what to throw on my plate and exactly how much so I could try as much as possible. It’s a decision you typically don’t have to decide at a restaurant. I tried to find the most unique offerings, but ended up with a plate lacking rhyme or reason: chilaquiles next to bread pudding, next to fruit, eggs atop bacon breakfast potatoes and croissants for the first round.
The chilaquiles are a traditional Mexican breakfast composed of tortilla chips soaked in red and green salsa and topped with eggs and cheese. This one was authentic as far as ingredients go, with those components intact, but a little lacking in the sharp flavor I know Mexican food to be capable of.
The bread pudding was my favorite, a gooey center of custard-soaked croissants, chocolate chips and blueberries. The bite was packed with a punch of warm spices — perhaps vanilla and cinnamon. Enough to fill me up alone. And from there I skipped around from savory to sweet and back to savory. The eggs were fluffy, and the bacon crunchy and fatty. The breakfast potatoes were paired with red peppers and doused in rich oils to prevent any dryness. The coconut chia pudding was one of many filled glass jars next to juicy strawberries and blackberries, with house made granola as an optional topping.
For seconds, I had fresh whipped cream with berry sauce and crème anglaise to pair with croissants and crumbled blueberry muffins, all made in-house. While the crème anglaise — a pourable custard sauce — was delectable and soft on my tongue, the croissants lacked a key ingredient: butter. The blueberry muffin was dry as well, making it essential to dip both in my coffee and drench the pourable crème and whipped cream over it.
The coffee was a burnt diner variety, typical of buffets, but I hoped that for that price, it would be smoother and a lighter roast. My one request would be to keep up with the coffee evolution because we now know we don’t have to burn our coffee beans.
Although I didn’t have any dry cereal, I liked seeing the sugary selections in glass cylinders, a nod to more innocent days. And suddenly I got the urge to go jump in the pool and lay out in the sun after a hearty meal.
Veranda is open for breakfast Monday through Friday from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. and for dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. On Saturday and Sunday, breakfast is served from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and dinner is served from 5 to 10 p.m.
