"I frequently stay at the Premier Inn Redditch, but absolutely refuse their 'all you can eat ' breakfast. Firstly, it is overpriced, and secondly it is too much faff. I don 't have time for a sit down restaurant experience at that time in the morning, and I particularly object when I have to make my own toast and get my own cup of tea. The problem is that it is getting increasingly difficult to find a good place for breakfast in the local area. There used to be a great cafe in Sainsbury 's close to the hotel, where they would do a proper cooked breakfast for a reasonable price, (see my separate review on that), but that has now been downgraded to microwave heated sausage or bacon rolls. Insipid. So imagine my relief therefore when I discovered there was a breakfast place, The Good Breakfast no less, on the M42 that was on my route. I 've often passed Hopwood Services, but never had a reason to stop. This time I did. The service area itself is a bit run down. The temporary toilets a prefabricated structure outside the main concourse looked quite dingy and more trouble than they were worth, and the place was generally drafty and unwelcoming. The Good Breakfast itself was one of the very few outlets that were open. I went for the Traditional Breakfast, an option somewhat reminiscent of Wetherspoons, and at £7.49, similarly priced. But, unlike the Wetherspoons offering, I was disappointed that it didn 't come with any toast. Worse still, they didn 't have any orange juice, even though it was clearly listed as an option on the overhead menu. Quality wise, the food was pretty dire. Given that I had to procure the orange juice myself, from Subway next door, it was disappointing. A wizened, dry, poor quality sausage, a fried egg on which the yolk was cooked through, a shrivelled tomato, and just a spoonful of beans, all served on an impossibly small plate. When you see a small plate like that, you know the portions are going to be quite mean and grudging. Shocking, as Gordon Ramsay might say. On a positive note, the bacon was better quality than Wetherspoons, and the mushrooms ironically an item which doesn 't figure in the Wetherspoons equivalent were not too bad. One last observation: the receipt was barely readable because the thermal print was too feint clearly an issue with the printer or the paper. A sure sign that neither have been properly maintained, which tells you all you need to know. I might give it another try to see if the quality fluctuates, but for the moment the jury 's still out."
