I elected not to torture myself playing the big Sunday tournaments today, opting instead for Easter brunch with the girlfriend followed by Sopranos with friends in the evening.
Brunch was at the Doubletree Suites in Cambridge. It was a nice spread, with a pretty wide variety of breakfast, lunch, and brunch foods, including waffles, pancakes, breakfast meats, smoked salmon, fresh fruit, chocolate fondue, breads, pastries, a carving station, baked haddock, and several kinds of dessert. Given the price ($40 per person, more than almost any other brunch we looked at- that’s what we get for waiting until the last minute to make reservations), though, I wouldn’t have expected to encounter the following:
- There was only one waffle iron. Are you serious? My college dining hall put out two waffle irons on the weekends. The Doubletree was feeding three packed restaurants worth of guests with a single buffet with a single waffle iron. The attendant was distributing the waffles in quarters so that everyone could get some. They were good waffles, but the waffle is really a brunch mainstay. Unacceptable.
- Drinks not included. It’s not easy to find an establishment stingier than a Las Vegas casino, but the Doubletree’s $40 brunch did not include soft drinks. I can see charging extra for Mimosas and Bloody Marys, but for OJ and coffee?
- Automatic 18% gratuity added to the bill. It was a BUFFET. I brought my own food to the table. The staff only brought drinks and took plates away. Frankly, they were understaffed for that. Our server was very friendly and well-intentioned, but she was clearly overworked and didn’t have time to refill our drinks consistently. Once she even forgot to bring refills after I explicitly asked her. I would have left her 15% anyway, but I didn’t appreciate being automatically charged more than that when I was serving my own food.
- $5 for parking. On top of everything else. And there is literally no way to get to this hotel without driving, it is on its own little grass island between several highways and probably a mile from any residential area or train station.
Whatever. There were at least some cute little kids dressed up in fancy Easter clothes. I made eye contact with one little girl, about six or seven years old, carrying an overflowing plate of food precariously close to her lovely white dress. She smiled at me, raised her highbrows, and licked her lips in acknowledgement of the bounty she was about to enjoy. Adorable.