Room service is a concept that feels appealing but does not always match up to our fantasies. A room-service menu hides a multitude of hidden challenges, primarily the need to deliver food that can hold together as it travels from hotel kitchen to hotel bedroom – the kitchen team needs to ensure that eggs do not overcook in their own residual heat along the way and bread, particularly toast, doesn’t arrive in a soggy, steamy mess. More than anything else in a hotel-room environment we want comfort, and eating a meal in your bathrobe depends on it. For their outstanding breakfast and all-day menus that deliver the fluffiest of buttermilk pancakes, gruyère- spiked, creamy omelettes scattered with the freshest soft herbs, housemade focaccia, serious caesar salads and sourdough-battered blue cod – not to forget the sensational pastrami sandwich – it is executive chef Des Harris and the team at Hilton Auckland that get our vote for Hotel Room Service of the Year 2023/2024.