A breakfast buffet in one country closely resembles a breakfast buffet several thousand kilometres away. The similarity is dictated by safety rules and equipment rather than by imitation.
Holding temperature eliminates most dishes
Food safety practice requires hot food to be held above a defined temperature and cold food below one, continuously, for the whole service period.
Very few dishes tolerate being held hot for two or three hours without collapsing, and the ones that do are eggs in bulk, sausages, baked beans and roasted tomatoes.
Anything that must be served immediately after cooking is either cooked to order at a station or simply not offered, which removes most of a country's breakfast repertoire.
Arrival patterns force overproduction
Guests arrive unevenly, with a heavy concentration in a short window driven by business schedules and tour departures.
The buffet must look full at the start of the rush and still look acceptable at the end of it, which means producing well above what will actually be eaten.
Dishes chosen for the buffet are therefore those with the lowest cost per portion of waste, since a substantial share of what is set out will not be consumed.
Equipment is standardised across the industry
Chafing dishes, refrigerated wells, conveyor toasters and juice dispensers are supplied by a small number of manufacturers to broadly common specifications.
Kitchens are designed around that equipment, and the equipment determines portion presentation, tray dimensions and how food is replenished during service.
A hotel wanting to serve something outside those formats must add labour at a station, which is the most expensive part of the operation.
The guest mix pulls toward the middle
An international property serves guests from many food cultures simultaneously, with no opportunity to ask preferences in advance.
The safe strategy is a broad base of widely accepted items plus a smaller local section, which is precisely the structure most buffets have.
Brand standards then formalise that structure into a specification, so the buffet becomes a defined product rather than a chef's decision.
Where the real local breakfast survives
Smaller independent hotels and guesthouses without buffet infrastructure serve a plated breakfast, which reopens the dishes that need to be eaten immediately.
In many cities the genuine local breakfast is eaten out rather than at hotels, at bakeries, market stalls and standing counters that open before dawn.
Skipping an included buffet in favour of that is frequently the better meal, and it is one of the few travel decisions that saves money and improves the experience simultaneously.