Four Points by Sheraton

(No picture, but imagine the setting of No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre)

The default option for travelers in California is to eat breakfast at their hotel. However, the continental breakfast in Four Points outperforms in service but in return is not complimentary.

Seating: Plenty. Breakfast opens at 6:30, and there are always 2-3 servers waiting to take your breakfast voucher, and tables galore, probably because breakfast isn’t free. The servers also bring OJ and apple juice around, like a real restaurant. The booths and chairs are standard issue. There’s no wow factor in their seating.

Decor: Quite bland. Beige walls, stock pattern for booth covers and chairs, and pictures of fruit over the row of food. While looking at them, I am reminded of the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, where the female main character goes insane from being trapped in a room by her husband with a nasty wallpaper for an entire summer. Good read on how females and mental issues were treated during the Victorian era.

Actual Food: Good traditional American breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, fruits, pastries, and cereal. Imagine a white family in America’s average meal circa 1940, before WWII, but cooked by the Mexican workers in Sheraton. The bacon is perfectly done, floppy but not raw at all, and minimally crispy. The eggs dried out my mouth, and weren’t delicious, but were admittedly genuine scrambled eggs. The pastries tasted like preservatives.

Rating: With decor crappy enough to make solitary confinement seem more interesting and passable food, this establishment earns few points for superior bacon and service because they charge for breakfast. 4/12 egg scramble.