Guests arrive at a seaside bed and breakfast with a fairly predictable set of expectations: a comfortable bed, a decent shower and a proper breakfast. The first two we can control up to a point, but the third is entirely ours. It is also the thing people talk about on the drive home. After twenty-odd years of running a breakfast room a few minutes from the promenade, I have come to think of the morning meal as the most honest bit of hospitality we offer. Nobody is distracted by the view from the window by then — they are simply sitting at a table, waiting to be fed.
Hornsea is a quiet resort, and that suits the pace of a breakfast service. Guests tend to be walkers, birdwatchers, sailors, families who have come for the beach and the Mere, and the occasional couple who have escaped inland for a couple of nights. Sea air does something to an appetite, and by half past seven most of them are ready for something substantial. Our kitchen is lit by half six.
The backbone of a full English is the meat, and this is where being in East Yorkshire is a genuine advantage. Our bacon is dry-cured back bacon from a butcher a few miles inland, delivered twice a week rather than bought in shrink-wrapped catering packs. Dry curing means no water is pumped into the meat, so it fries rather than boils and actually tastes of pork. We offer smoked and unsmoked, cut a little thicker than supermarket rashers, with the rind left on because it crisps beautifully on a flat griddle.
Sausages are the other half of the equation. We use a coarse-ground pork sausage with a good ratio of meat to rusk, and we cook them slowly in the oven at around 180°C for twenty minutes, turning once. This is the single change that improved our breakfasts more than any other. Grilled or griddled from raw, a sausage will split and dry out before the middle is cooked. Finished in the oven, it stays juicy and the skin browns evenly.
Black pudding appears on the menu for those who want it, sliced thick and warmed gently in the same pan as the bacon. A few guests ask whether it is "proper" to include it. It is not compulsory, but it is very good.
Eggs come from free-range hens kept a short drive away, with real access to grass rather than a nominal pop hole. They are collected often enough that the yolks stand up proudly in the pan, which is the only test that really matters. We keep them at room temperature for cooking and turn the box daily.
How they are cooked is down to the guest:
There is a vegetarian cooked breakfast on offer as well, built around the same eggs, grilled halloumi, mushrooms, tomatoes and toast. It gets ordered far more often than you might expect.
The preserve shelf in our pantry runs roughly with the calendar. Seville orange marmalade is made in January, when the fruit is in the shops and the kitchen smells extraordinary for a week. Strawberry and raspberry jams follow in early summer. Damson, blackberry and apple arrive in the autumn, some of the blackberries picked from the hedgerows along the old railway path. Yorkshire forced rhubarb, that strange and wonderful winter crop, makes a bright pink jam that guests ask about constantly.
Jars are labelled with the year they were made, which started as a note to ourselves and has become something guests look for. Bread is either a slow-proved white tin or a sourdough, sliced thick and toasted to order — never pre-toasted and stacked, which is the quickest way to ruin a good breakfast. Butter is proper butter. Tea is Yorkshire, coffee is ground and made in a cafetière, and there is always a bowl of porridge for anyone who wants to start lighter.
A full English is not for everyone, and it is no good pretending otherwise. We ask about dietary requirements at booking rather than on the morning, because that is when it is actually useful. Gluten-free sausages and bread live in a separate part of the freezer, and gluten-free items are cooked in a dedicated pan. Vegan guests are looked after with avocado, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, beans and a decent meat-free sausage. Anyone with a smaller appetite can order a "half" breakfast and pay accordingly, which is popular with older guests and anyone heading out for a long walk.
Allergen information is kept in a folder in the dining room. Sausages and black pudding usually contain rusk, so they are not gluten-free by default, and this catches people out more often than you would think.
Breakfast is served between half seven and half nine, with an earlier sitting by arrangement for anyone catching a tide, a train or a ferry. Portions are generous but not overwhelming — the aim is a guest who feels well set up rather than immobilised. A full English, a pot of tea and a slice of toast will comfortably carry someone along the promenade to the seafront, around the Mere with binoculars, or out along the Trans Pennine Trail towards Hornsea's old railway line.
For early departures we will wrap a bacon sandwich in foil and send it with them. It is a small thing, but it means the last memory of the house is a warm one, and that is worth the extra ten minutes at the griddle.
Hornsea Bed & Breakfast shares practical, down-to-earth guidance on seaside bed and breakfast in hornsea, east yorkshire for readers across the UK.
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