In the never-ending quest for getting as much out of your hotel buffet breakfast as is humanly possible, people will go to ever more complex, convoluted, and frankly ballsy ends to guarantee good value for money. This week, however, a British man — known as ‘elburritomonster’ on TikTok, who gained viral fame for sharing mouthwatering burrito recipes — has taken things a step further, unveiling a brilliant trick for transforming a hotel brekky into a free lunch.
We love a good travel hack – those little tips and tricks for getting some easy wins out of your adventures that, as soon as they’re presented to you, you’ll inevitably kick yourself for not thinking of them beforehand; from beating recline rage, travelling for free, or even boosting your hard-earned gains, there’s so many travel hacks out there these days that it almost makes you question just how potent they can be…
That is until you come across a real game-changer such as this. Earlier this week, a British TikToker who goes by the name of ‘elburritomonster’ and has garnered himself an impressive 672,000 followers simply by posting delicious burrito recipes for his hungry followers, went a little off-piste with a clip from his skiing holiday to the Swiss Alps. The influencer revealed his brand new hack for making a burrito from your hotel breakfast, allowing you to pre-pack a lunch for your mountainside adventures, free of charge.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the hack revolves around bringing one absolutely essential piece of culinary kit with you to your hotel’s breakfast buffet: a soft flour tortilla or — for our gluten-adverse readers out there — any gut-friendly wrap will do…
WATCH: The British burrito baller in action.
Once you arrive at the buffet, tortilla locked and loaded, and have had your fill of actual breakfast foods, the influencer gets to work, explaining his motivation in quintessential blunt and British terms:
“I ain’t paying £40 for lunch in the mountain… but obviously I brought wraps on holiday.”
@elburritomonster
Tapping into an evidently universal will to milk as much value for money out of a hotel breakfast as is legally feasible, the video quickly garnered over 1.2 million plays. Assuming you’re just as eager as all his followers to get into the details of his method, we’ll take you through it step by step: first, eat and enjoy the breakfast that you’ve already paid for, remembering to sit and savour it for a moment before getting to work. Step two: quietly grab your wrap, and head back over to the buffet table…
Step three: load up your wrap with whatever takes your fancy. This is where the continental section of the brekky buffet really comes into its own; our hero goes for a layer of cured meats, followed by an ensemble of cheeses, eggs, bacon, and then tops it off with some tomatoes and cucumber in an effort to uphold a facade of good health and get some much-needed textural variation into his creation too. Step four: wrap it all up as tightly as possible (if, like me, you’re not especially deft at this part, his many other videos can offer guidance).
Step five is the crucial part: use a hotel napkin to re-wrap your wrap in a suitably non-descript package that should make strolling right out of the hotel unnoticed pretty easy. Step six: pop it in your bag, head up the mountain, and enjoy your lunch when the time is right, basking in the grand views and your flawlessly executed mission. The hack has been revered as such a success that it quickly gathered supportive comments from viewers, with one calling the poster a “genius” and the other making plans of his own:
“I’m going to have to start taking wraps with me on work trips. Those hotel buffets won’t know what hit them!”
@AgroforesterJim
So, next time you’re headed out on your holidays and want to secure that rarest of all things — a truly free lunch — then this man has you covered. If, however, you happen to be a hotel catering assistant who’s just read this article, let’s just keep this between us?