How eggs Benedict became the world’s hotel breakfast

Chris Dong

It’s 7:30 a.m., and Japan’s Niseko mountain range sits in the distance, on the other side of a hotel window. Downstairs, the restaurant is busy preparing breakfast orders. One of the most popular dishes on the menu is a classic developed about 6,300 miles away and 130 years ago: eggs Benedict.

At the Park Hyatt Niseko Hanazono, expect a serious deviation from the original.

“Our Benedict highlights the region’s exceptional produce with a distinctly local touch,” said Marcello Mereu, executive chef at the hotel. That means a thick layer of smoked Hokkaido scallops delicately placed atop an English muffin. And in another twist, a pile of salmon roe completes the dish atop a layer of creamy hollandaise.

Eggs Benedict - a carbohydrate base below a layer of protein, followed by a poached egg, all drenched in hollandaise - has an enduring popularity around the world, with interpretations spanning far and wide.

Here’s how it quietly took over the world’s hotel breakfast scene from New York to Japan.

There are two prevailing narratives on how the dish got its start.

In one, a maître d’ at the Waldorf Astoria New York threw it together in 1894.

According to a 1942 article in the New Yorker, a guest by the name of Lemuel Benedict came into the dining room of the Waldorf for breakfast. He needed a hangover cure, so he ordered four components: buttered toast, crisp bacon, two poached eggs and a saucer of hollandaise.

Instead of serving these items separately, the hotel’s famed maître d’ at the time, Oscar Tschirky, replaced the toast with an English muffin and stacked the pieces. The modern-day eggs Benedict came to life and became a staple of the menu.

Another origin story emerged at the fine-dining restaurant Delmonico’s, in the Financial District just a few miles from the Waldorf.

In “The Epicurean,” a cookbook published in 1894 by the restaurant’s chef, Charles Ranhofer, a recipe for “Eggs a la Benedick” calls for an English muffin, ham, poached eggs and hollandaise.

Over a century later, Delmonico’s still serves the dish as an off-menu item because it no longer offers brunch, according to Dennis Turcinovic, owner and managing partner at Delmonico’s Hospitality Group.

“Not much has changed from Ranhofer’s version, except using elevated ingredients and techniques,” Turcinovic said.

Undisputedly, the dish’s popularity spread to other high-end hotels and restaurants.

“Eggs Benedict became an emblem of brunch and of a certain kind of late-Gilded Age luxury,” said Paul Freedman, a professor at Yale University who studies food history.

The dish became a symbol of leisure and, by association, wealth.

“Suddenly, folks were spending an entire Sunday morning lounging around, drinking and eating eggs Benedict,” Freedman said.

The dish was mostly served in the upper echelon of dining establishments, such as four- and five-star hotels, because hollandaise was laborious and difficult to prepare.

“You would really only find it in hotels for many, many years, because you have to be proficiently skilled to execute hollandaise sauce,” said Adam Crocini, senior vice president and global head of food and beverage at Hilton.

One of the five “mother sauces” in French cuisine, hollandaise traces back to the Normandy region in the mid-1700s, Freedman said. The egg- and butter-based sauce was introduced across the Atlantic about a century later and is crucial to any eggs Benny.

Some hotel restaurants are playing with the dish’s extravagant origins - the Peninsula New York, at its Clement Restaurant, serves a version with Perigord truffle or salmon caviar - but eggs Benedict is not just about pure luxury and classic ingredients anymore.

These days, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of global interpretations.

“There is such an opportunity for hotels and their chefs to take on flavors or styles of a region and embellish,” Crocini said.

Those styles are represented in the Thai curry Benedict at Naka Island Resort in Phuket and a fresh Florida citrus-infused hollandaise at JW Marriott Clearwater Beach Resort & Spa. The Sagamore Pendry Baltimore replaces the traditional ham with locally sourced Maryland blue crab, and the Rosewood Bermuda swaps an English muffin for savory codfish cake.

At-home chefs might try tasty twists that include avocado, corned beef, mushroom or chorizo. The permutations and global popularity show that eggs Benedict is here to stay, Freedman noted.

“Somehow, the dish has survived over 100 years, and it can go another century at least.”