I only had pictures of my fantastic experience at Bottega, Birmingham airport, which I meant to rave about then didn’t so I thought after needing to rant about airport restaurants at East Midlands Airport I decided to combine the two.

Like many travellers travelling budget airlines with the worst time slots leaving from local airports anywhere from 5.30am to 7.30am I like to arrive early and have breakfast in the airport before I leave.

I usually opt to travel from Birmingham as it’s bigger, recently refurbished and they have Bottega, an Italian airport food chain where the service has always been fast, professional, the food is delicious and the prices are very reasonable. You can get scrambled eggs, avocado, tomatoes with coffee, tea or juice for £20. It’s really good value and shout out to our waiter the last time we visited Mariusz who was fantastic with an amazing sense of humour, no extra charge. I cannot recommend this spot more highly. I wish they’d open one at East Midlands Airport.

In contrast trying to find a simple sit down breakfast at East Midlands was really challenging. The first place we attempted to eat was awful and I don’t use this adjective lightly.

Castle Rock Taproom and Kitchen I felt like I was in a prison canteen, a predominately very rowdy crowd enjoying greasy fry ups and pints of lager with shots and cocktail chasers. The racket was deafening. Like that clatter you associate with incarceration. It might be some people’s thing to get the holiday off with a bang. It’s not mine. We made a swift about turn and headed back downstairs to find somewhere else.

The first place we stumbled upon was Terracotta Italian Kitchen, which wasn’t much better. Before writing this I did a bit of research and discovered it only opened in April 2026 so they could be experiencing teething problems, staffing problems and not yet found their flow.

There was a queue to sit down but we were hungry so decided to wait it out, it wasn’t busy inside, about 1/3 full at around 5.45am and we thought with loads of tables available it wouldn’t take long to get seated.

The organisation was shocking, the hostess slow, clearing and wiping tables before seating people which seemed crazy with other waiters and waitresses not busy. When we did get seated things didn’t improve, it took 15 minutes to take our order, two scrambled eggs on toast. What arrived was not great, eggs slimy and under cooked on one solitary not toasted piece of brown bread. If we weren’t in a hurry to down the food and make the flight we would have sent it back.

I didn’t take pictures, just ate it.

The bill for the eggs and two drinks £30.00.

I am not sure if there are any other options in East Midlands Airport for a sit down breakfast and they may have had staff issues that day but we discussed the owner of the business, Avolta being horrified if they knew how badly their restaurant was being run.

If you have eaten airport breakfast at Bottega and like me really enjoyed it, these spots at East Midlands Airport are two to avoid.