Hotel Room Service Menus Can Get Out Of Hand Real Fast

Hotel room service is one of life's great luxuries. There is something about summoning food and drink from the comfort of your private room — without getting out of bed, even —  that feels deeply indulgent. It has become an increasingly heavy burden for hotels to maintain, however; and, while some (like this Las Vegas hotel) are finding workarounds, many high-end establishments feel compelled to keep it going because their guests demand it.  Sometimes those guests' demands can be very peculiar: Hotels.com just released a survey revealing some of the strangest things that patrons have ordered.  

While most guests utilize a relatively limited portion of the room service menu (burgers top the popularity list), others enjoy living it up, as the survey notes, with 27% of hotels surveyed saying that their average traveler racks up more than $100 in room service bills over the course of their stay. Some guests really take it up a notch, though, and use the menu as a point of departure rather than as a finite list of options. Where some see limitations, others recognize possibilities and consider room service carte blanche for calling in unusual requests. And if money is no object, the hospitality industry is usually ready to entertain those requests, however unusual or difficult. 

This has resulted in some very interesting orders for food or food-adjacent items on behalf of hotel guests. Some of the most peculiar include an order for 40 stuffed pigeons, no-egg-white omelets, sides of weed, and melted ice cream.  

You could sum up the requests in different categories. We'd say the leading contenders are: Everyday Eccentric; Extreme Party Needs; High-End Pets; Just Messing with You; and Just Plain Misunderstood.

We'd place orders for melted ice cream, cockle popcorn, boiled bottled water, bison, and weed in the Everyday Eccentric category. They're quirky, but not quite crazy. Tons of people like their ice cream melty; and, if you're staying in a hotel without access to a microwave, why wouldn't you order it just the way you like it? You're not even leaving your room, so it seems like the logical next step — for some people.

Though it's not actually popcorn, cockle popcorn is actually a thing. It's shellfish, "popcorn" style — battered and fried in small bits — just the sort of snack some folks get a hankering for in the middle of the night. Though it's known in parts of the U.K., it's not such a familiar sight in most hotel kitchens.  

Another Everyday Eccentric request is "boiled bottled water." It sounds like someone was very nervous about parasites and was taking zero chances. Boiling water is the safest way to drink water that may have been contaminated, and bottled water has been considered more reliable than its counterpart on tap, despite the threats to the environment. Better safe than sorry and sick, we guess. 

While bison may not have been on the menu, it is getting increasingly popular as people search for eco-friendlier beef alternatives, so the hope that it might be lurking about the hotel somewhere — or at a nearby restaurant — doesn't seem totally surprising. 

And weed? Well, it's now legal in many parts, and at least the orders are coming from hotels in states where it's been legalized. But, travelers, please take note: Even marijuana edibles are not available via room service.

Another set of high-maintenance room service requests goes in the Extreme Party Needs category. These orders come from people living the luxe life in their hotel rooms — with a slew of their closest friends. Sometimes, people just need a little extra room service to take their party from ho-hum to that next level.

Extreme Party Needs helps explain a $5,000 KFC order from a well-known pop star, who apparently figured it was better to order through the hotel than through the app (where it's so easy to make dumb mistakes).

Party extremists were also behind the request for wait staff, food, and security service for 150 people that came with only two hours advance notice. Does it help explain if we note that this order took place in L.A., and appears to have been a Justin Bieber concert after-party? The hotel pulled it off, though — we just hope they were duly compensated (and generously tipped).

Extreme partying doesn't look the same everywhere, though. A case in point comes from a hotel in Egypt that received a request for a grill-fest for 30. The order included five whole lambs, five party platters, and — the kicker — 40 stuffed pigeons (also called squab). The stuffed birds are quite a delicacy in Egypt, and the guest was clearly aiming to impress. Sounds like it must have been quite a rager. Time of order? 2:30 a.m.

While some hotel guests are worried about entertaining their friends, others are more focused on man's best friend, which brings us to the High-End Pet requests. Hotel patrons are known to have ordered rice bowls and Kobe beef for their doggies. Others have shared quarters with animals requiring a little more TLC — like the guests who ordered 20 pounds of ice for the penguins hanging out in their bathtub (It was part of a legit travel show; don't worry).

Sometimes the High-End Pet request is for a new pet. Guests in a Puerto Rican hotel called up in the middle of the night, asking for a live animal. They didn't want to eat it, though; they were making a movie starring a (literal) old goat and the lead had tragically passed overnight, so they were searching for a last-minute replacement. Amazingly, their hotel delivered and the film was able to wrap up on schedule.

There are also requests that seem like someone's idea of a practical joke, the Just Messing With You category.

Orders for no-egg-white omelets (Couldn't you just ask for "all yolks"?) are a good example. The same goes for orders of "eggless eggs in Hell" — spicy shakshuka eggs but without eggs. Does that mean vegan eggs or just some spicy sauce on a plate? We'll never know.

And we're not sure if it was genuine hunger or a strange sense of humor that prompted one patron to request a cooked whole fish from the hotel kitchen. While there's nothing strange about a whole cooked fish (though making it yourself has a serious learning curve), this order was different. Turns out the guest had brought the fish himself to the hotel. You know what they say: Buy a man a fish, and you've fed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime. But teach a man to order a whole fish from a hotel, and you've made him the butt of jokes for all eternity.

Last but not least, there are also a set of requests that we suspect aren't really that strange; they're just misunderstood. We'd include orders for "diet water" in that last category. While all water is obviously calorie-free, "diet" water is often shorthand for water with supplements added (Free Dieting notes that there is even a Japanese brand actually called "Diet Water").

The guests asking for blowfish might qualify here, too. While blowfish is not readily available for consumption in most parts of the world (learning to prepare it requires extensive training in Japan), there is also a hangover cure called Blowfish, which (we have an inkling) might have been what the guest was actually looking for.