The Best Italian Breakfast: In Hotels and Charming Houses

The Italian hotel breakfast is usually an afterthought. This book argues it should be the point. 

Through examples from hotels and small lodgings across Italy, Lucrezia Margotti, a journalist and culinary consultant, and Stefania Petruzzelli, who has a background in cultural anthropology, document properties where breakfast has been elevated from perfunctory service to a serious act of hospitality. Most often, these are built around local producers, regional specialties, and artisanal products. 

The focus is the thinking behind the table rather than recipes. In the best examples documented here, the spread tells guests something about where they are, linking the surrounding landscape and food culture in the way that a good dinner in a restaurant might, but earlier in the day and with different stakes. 

Photographs and descriptions range from simple, ingredient-driven presentations to more elaborate ones, all organized around the same conviction that sourcing and origin are what give a breakfast table its character.

The book demonstrates appealing curiosity and reveals many interesting approaches. However, its prose sometimes strives for literary effect where more direct statements would be more satisfying.

With a foreword by Massimo Bottura

Paperback. Color photographs throughout. In Italian and in English.