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Think of the club sandwich. It’s a strange thing—hey, extra slice of toast!—that doesn’t seem to exist in real life outside of the golf club. Curb your enthusiasmBut there is one place where it reigns supreme: its spiritual home, the room service menu at a hotel.

Room service is an ever-changing beast, sometimes sublime, sometimes a place that always has “chicken tikka masala curry” and the soup of the day (thanks, Best Western). When I think of food in hotels, I think of restaurants, not rooms. Places that lure big-name chefs like influencers to a free brunch. Room service is frequently a shrugging afterthought. If people like Tom Kerridge and Jean-Georges Vongerichten aren’t in the kitchen often, you can be sure they’re not working the night shift. Even if the crowd is tuned to room service, many hotels just phone it in. Those in major travel hubs usually offer the kind of dreary dining room that only Alan Partridge could love. But lukewarm chili in front of Love Island and the garbage left outside the rooms looks even more desolate.

Sure, I’ve experienced the other end of the spectrum. But that also comes with challenges. I’m painfully middle class enough to cringe when I hand cash directly to people. Prepare yourself for the most unrelatable story ever: I once got lucky and got a suite at the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok that included a butler. Well, “lucky”: that was the only upside to being trapped in the city thanks to the Icelandic volcano. I spent the entire stay running from him to stop him from pressing the elevator button for me, and having to beg him not to leave giant chocolate elephants in the room every night. In-room dining was unbearable, constant interruptions, intrusive concern. Do the rich like this service? I can’t handle it. And I won’t even mention that he unpacks my dirty laundry.

At a highly sought-after hanok hotel in Seoul, I was unable to sleep at all thanks to a pancake-thin mattress on hard tiles fitted with the world’s most powerful underfloor heating. I longed for breakfast, something comforting, pleasant, familiar. Instead—knowing I was writing about the trip—the beaming staff brought me a series of small dishes on a tray: a grey-green porridge of bitter mugwort, bony salted corvina fish, and several banchan. I love kimchi, but at that moment it sparked no joy. I could have cried, especially as the beautiful courtyard was lined with guests sitting on their terraces eating bacon, eggs, and—sob—toast. If they’d had real beds, I might have freaked out.

Who orders room service without using the loneliness of the long-distance traveler as an excuse? The terminally lazy or disinterested? (I’ll always leave the hotel for a culinary adventure.) The overpaid? Couples on sex marathons? I’ve heard a few stories. The PR of an upscale hotel in rural Ireland told me about a member of a 1990s girl band who booked a suite with a clergywoman (also female) and the two of them spent thousands on steaks and Burgundy. Well, if you don’t want to get dressed long enough to go to a restaurant. I kind of understand that.

Delivery apps are available in cities, which is perhaps why smaller establishments’ efforts are so half-hearted. I’ve looked at the websites of a few high-profile hotels, and there’s barely any mention of room service. One exception is the Savoy, the grand old lady of The Strand, with its numerous Gordon Ramsay restaurants. The menu seems to be built along the lines of “canapés for jaded oligarchs,” but I suppose you don’t have to worry about “caviar and spices” or “wagyu tartare” deteriorating too much on the way from the kitchen to the penthouse (or being found on Deliveroo). Or the Berkeley, also with “canapés,” including £475 Petrossian caviar and oysters. I’d love to see someone nibbling an oyster. I now have a picture of terrycloth-clad plutocrats lugging their dinners across the country.

Of course, there are those who work hard at it. My mate Robbie Bargh of hotel and restaurant consultancy Gorgeous Group tells me about rooms with special amber lighting and dining room furniture. And there are the nerds too. At Soho Farmhouse, he says, breakfast was delivered “on the back of an old milk float”. That fills me with dismay, like “hold my beer, Marie Antoinette”.

I judge hotels by small generosities. Is there real milk in the minibar? Something homemade, a lovely soft biscuit or two in a Kilner jar? You’re in safe hands. My rules for room service: Never order breakfast unless you’re so passionate you can’t swing into the dining room in your sweatpants – hotel breakfast is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Forget the bendy triple toast sandwich. Order the burger.

Marina O’Loughlin is a writer, editor and restaurant critic

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