In Defense Of Brunch: A Response To The Dallas Observer

======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ====

Every once in a while, a piece of journalism floats across my desk that warrants an immediate response. It happened when The New York Times assessed the modern man. And now it’s happened again with something near and dear to my heart — brunch.

The Dallas Observer published a piece of writing titled “Brunch: The Dumbest, Worst Meal“, and it’s atrocious. Naturally, I had to respond.

As always, the original article is in quotes.

I’m pretty sure brunch was invented in 1962, when some restaurant owner in Tallahassee said, “Serving breakfast 24 hours a day would be a pain in the ass — mostly since we never even serve breakfast — but I do hate my kitchen staff and I’ve been meaning to get rid of them. So we’ll serve breakfast sorta near lunchtime, and we’ll call it brunch and everyone who comes in to eat brunch will be a hungover dick.”

Okay, Alice. You listen and you listen good. Brunch first came to fruition 1895 when you weren’t even a blip on your great grandparent’s radar. It was initially intended to serve lighter food in favor of the larger dishes for church goers, and yes, it was also intended to be for people that over-imbibed the night before.

I’m all for blasting things I don’t agree with, but at least get educated and use facts to prove your point.

“And we’ll refuse to offer the regular lunch menu so that diners are even more pissed, and we’ll put booze in all the orange juice so we ruin cocktails at the same time, and we’ll charge normal prices, but people will still bitch because they’ll be all, “It’s just eggs!” and they won’t be entirely wrong because the menu will mostly be just eggs and jokes about eggs and by noon, everyone will quit. This is such a good idea that surely other restaurant owners will copy it for decades to come.”

What type of ramshackle holes in the wall are you going to that don’t also offer a lunch menu? Step your game up, Alice. And since when did booze “ruin” orange juice? There are two ways to make orange juice better, and they’re called “vodka” and “champagne.” This is day one brunch stuff.

Furthemore, no one just orders eggs at brunch. And if you do, you’re either a working man in Carhartt overalls that got drunk on some ‘shine the night before (which I respect the hell out of), or you’re a picky eater, in which case I want you away from my table.

I don’t care if we’re tossing eggs up on an English Muffin or some Crab Cakes, but you best believe I’m getting my money’s worth calorically speaking.

For all you brunch-sympathizers, please don’t confuse my brunch hate for food hate.

I’d like to consider myself more of a brunch truther, but go on.

I love food. And I believe with all of my being that brunch is trying to steal food from me. Brunch is trying to convince me that two separate meals should count as one. By taking breakfast and lunch and mashing them together, brunch thinks I won’t notice it’s trying to steal a meal from my day. I see you, brunch. You try to shut my mouth with popovers and strawberry butter and sometimes it works, but I still hate you as much as someone can hate a meal concept.

No one is trying to “steal” food from you, Alice. If you and your friends are anything like me and my friends, then you’re still getting your meals in for the day. The only difference is that you want your morning meal to come at 8 in the morning, and our morning meal comes at 2 a.m. after the bar shuts down. Sure, yours might be cereal and ours might be pizza, but a meal is a meal is a meal, Alice.

Much like you hate the concept of brunch, I hate your concept of meals in general. Free your mind.

You just never really know when or where brunch is going to show up and then suddenly, you’re mid-conversation with someone, and Brunch elbows in and is like, “LET’S MIX IT UP, Y’ALLS!! YEAH!! LET’S GO CRAZY ON EGGS FOR A COUPLE HOURS, AND LET’S HEARTBURN THIS MOTHER UP WITH SOME ALCOHOLIC-ED BEVERAGES! WHO’S IN? YOU? THAT GUY? THAT GUY IS TOTALLY IN. RIGHT, GUY? NO? C’MON, GUY!”

Your life must be hell. If the worst thing you can imagine is some dude forcing Eggs Benny and 11 a.m. cocktails on you, then I’m not sure what to tell you. I sit with my phone foaming at the mouth waiting for that to happen to me, because my friends are dope people who do dope things.

Oh, and don’t think I don’t slow clap you for your clever breakfast + lunch name combo. I have to admit that you’re smart. I know your ad team had to have come up with a thousand name combo options, and when they suggested “leakfast,” you were like, “NO WAY!”

You’re grasping at the beef jerky straws in my Bloody Marys right now, Alice. This never happened. I’m going to put it out there that the person that came up with this was vodka-drunk after some bangers and mash. He was probably yucking it up with his bros and it stuck.

And you were like, “Too easy.” And when they tried to pass off “leakfunchst” as an option, you slapped them. And then they came up with a name that was perfectly monosyllabic and would run right off the tongue of someone mid-walk-of-shame: brunch. And you knew you had every college student by their college student balls. “Uptown won’t know what hit it.”

No one said “leakfunchst.” It just never happened, Alice. Did someone probably say “blunch?” Yeah, I’m sure they did, because it actually works and sounds pretty good. But even bimbos can come up with catchy wedding hashtags, so I don’t think “brunch” was derived from some meeting of the minds.

I will give brunch credit for celebrating bloody marys, though. High fives to whoever put vodka in the gazpacho.

It’s… it’s tomato juice, Alice.

I can absolutely get behind the idea of putting booze in cold soup, but why stop with bloody marys? Where’s the vodka in my vichyssoise? How about whiskey-blasting the nasty out of some broccoli cheese soup? The bloody mary is the only brunch beverage I fully support. It is my sincere hope that it blazes a cold-soup-as-booze-beverage trail in 2016.

To be fair, people actually do put booze in soup. This is a completely normal practice among chefs far and wide. There’s a heady little joint down the street from my house that does a remarkable soup that’s made with Guinness. There’s also a little grocery store in my hometown that does a delightful champagne cream of mushroom soup that I used to treat myself to on Sundays. Do I need to go on or have I sufficiently killed your “joke?”

Mimosas, however, can just shut the hell up and go back to the baby shower they came from.

I bet you’d be a dreadful godmother, which is why I assume you’ve got a grudge against baby showers too.

Brunch also frequently likes to take advantage of buffets. One thousand omelet farts upon you, buffets. Buffets appeal to my desire to Eat All The Everything, but in practice always produce sadness. Firstly, I’m not in your restaurant looking to walk.

Weren’t you just complaining about people trying to “take” a meal from you? And now you’re mad that they’re offering too much food? Get it together, Alice.

My FuelBand’s only going to be logging fork-to-face workouts in this next few minutes.

Ohhh, you’re a FuelBand person. Okay, this is all starting to make more sense.

Secondly, I am not good at plating, which is why I like to go to restaurants and let a professional plate the foods for me.

The point of buffets is to shove as much food onto one plate as humanly possible, not to “plate” foods in an enticing way. And to be honest, Alice, most places that offer brunch buffets also offer menu’d items for a little extra. Me? I go with the menu because it puts out luxurious lunch vibes.

Thirdly, buffets like to include those build-your-own anything stations. If I wanted to build my meal myself, I would have bought a Skilsaw and a box of Froot Loops. Instead, I came to Jeff’s House of Food because I’d like to trade dollars for delicious. Please, just make it so. Without buffets and without this build-your-owning.

Oh no, Alice. Are there too many choices for you? Is it dreadful for you to select what part of your meal you’d like more or less from? Gee, that just sounds like your own personal hell. I don’t know how you get through leakfunchst with your thoughts racing like this.

And call it breakfast, lunch or dinner while you’re at it, for bloody mary’s sake.

Nah, we’ll stick with “brunch.” We appreciate your concerns, though. .

Image via Shutterstock

41

Respond

Email this to a friend

Hey, I saw this on Post Grad Problems. Check it out.

Will

Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.

• @willdefries
• @willdefries
• defriewf
• will@grandex.co