"Anyone stayed at a B&B which brings breakfast to your room?" a bed and breakfast owner asks on Twitter. Then, when I tweet that I've just stayed in one, she comes back with another question, "In bed or at a table?"
I know what's brought this on. The Reading Rooms in Margate has just appeared on Channel Four's Hotel Rescue in which the owners planned to offer breakfast as room service – revolutionary for a B&B. And that's exactly why I've just been to sample it.
Welcome to Dreamland, say big red letters on the side of a building, the cold, sunny day we drive into town. Here's Hawley Square, a Georgian glory flanked by 18th-century townhouses with a Wesleyan chapel on one side and a perfect Regency theatre tucked into a southern corner. Hardly the usual image of Margate.
Oh good – no crack-of-dawn scramble, we can park free till 9am tomorrow. Now, where is number 31?
"Must be that one," says M, pointing at a smart, dark exterior with miniature trees on the balcony, but mounting the steps, a broken numeral on the door sends a mixed message. Rat-a-tat-tat. Owners Liam Nabb and Louise Oldfield come to the door.
Oh, are you still decorating? A chandelier glitters, an original banister sweeps into our line of vision along with a shabby-chic paint job. It's like stepping into a shoot for a Parisian magazine, so what's not quite right?
"They need to get something down on the hall floor and stairs so your eye tells you those beautiful distressed blue walls are deliberate," hisses my artist friend, as Liam lugs our bags up naked wooden stairs.
The square was built between 1760 and 1780. Lady Hamilton apparently rented a residence a few doors along this uppermost (and earliest) row, Lord Nelson, presumably, a frequent visitor. But the thread by which some of these houses have survived is very flimsy; Liam and Louise tell us this townhouse had been divided into eight bedsits when they bought it in 2007, and the chapel opposite has fallen into developers' hands.
They chose The Reading Rooms as a name to evoke Margate's heyday as one of England's earliest seaside resorts. In the pre-slot-machine era, public reading rooms provided indoor distraction on inclement days.
Some of the furniture has only arrived today, they explain, as we ascend to our two (of three) bedrooms, but it's crystal clear, from the antique French armoires, rococo beds with padded silk headboards and little breakfast tables for two, that sheer indulgence and romance are on the cards here ... not bucket-and-spade breaks.
Bathrooms? The best I have ever come across in a B&B. Sexy dark tiling, glass-sided walk-in showers and antique baths, double basins, ornate iron radiators, REN smellies and still enough space for a morning workout.
Breakfast (fresh carrot juice, hurrah!) in our rooms, is the best for weeks and no question of the attention to detail (we learn of writerly friends providing book suggestions for each room, planned extra bathroom hooks, and the endless question of how to stow tea and coffee stylishly) – but the bigger picture means finishing a guest sitting room, I tell them. With that in place, it would be true to surmise that 10 years after I first luxuriated at a Hotel du Vin, I've found similar indulgence at a B&B. Is that too long for a Tweet?
Gastro-file Don't miss amazing pooris, dosais and more, with an amusing nouvelle cuisine touch, a walk away at The Indian Princess (01843 231504).
31 Hawley Square (01843 225166, thereadingroomsmargate.co.uk); launch price of £110 per double per night, B&B. Further information: visitkent.co.uk.