Day 29 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.
Hammond, LA. We are staying at a Holiday Inn here, not an Express, so no free breakfast, but when we checked in they gave us a voucher worth $20 towards breakfast at the in-house restaurant. Due to past experiences at Holiday Inn hotel restaurants we didn’t take advantage of it on the first morning, but for some reason we thought it might be worth a try today. If it wasn’t that good there was nothing ventured as it would be free. There was a buffet, but we thought we should order off the menu to make sure we got something fresh. Donna ordered her go to, Eggs Benedict, I just ordered scrambled eggs, hash browns and sausage. We should have known better.
It seemed to take an awful long time for the food to arrive. When it did arrive and the waitress put the plates down in front of us, mine looked fine, but Donna’s looked weird. The hollandaise sauce was a dark orange color and the ham slices were a 1/2″ thick. She took one taste of the sauce and it was awful. I dipped my fork in it and confirmed her opinion. It was inedible. She called the waitress back and told her that the food was disgusting. Waitress apologized, the manager visited and he apologized and Donna ended up just eating from the buffet. My scrambled eggs were fine and the sausage was half decent, but my hash browns looked exactly like hers (that came off the buffet) and my toast was at best, warm. We can now guarantee that this was the absolute last time we will ever eat at a Holiday Inn restaurant ever.
After eating we took another early morning drive over to Mandeville. Not for beignets this time, but for a nice walk along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The temperature was in the 70’s, there was a slight breeze off the lake, hardly a cloud in the sky and you could see the causeway stretching to the horizon. On the way back to Hammond we did get a good breakfast. Donna got a chocolate covered chocolate cake doughnut and I had glazed cinnamon twist from Dat’s Us Deaux-Nuts in Ponchatoula.