I Love Brunch. But Also, What the Fuck?

We do it all for the Veuve mimosas

---

I’ve been temporarily enlisted into the sacred “brunch squad” of the twinking vixen who holds my romantic gaze—AKA my girlfriend. This is an exclusive, tight-knit group of confidants entrusted to make the first day of another solar lap an unforgettable experience by indulging in regular breakfast food with an extra strip of bacon. My existential ass is of the opinion that birthdays are a social construct because we invented the calendar as a measurement of time. This day means nothing. It is merely another small progression inching us closer to our inevitable demise. Let’s guzzle some $15 mimosas.

If you really think about it, every life philosophy essentially boils down to, I wish I was home right now. The beauty of brunch plans is it detects this block of free time on a Sunday morning that could otherwise be spent sleeping in or binging The Office for the -nth time against my will, and instead, inserts a frivolous, drawn-out sojourn like splitting exorbitantly priced avocado toast with three of your friends, a stranger one of them slept with, and someone you secretly hate.

The scrooges amongst us will hector about such a grotesque expenditure, but I’m convinced the only way someone can be “good with money” is if they deny themselves every conceivable pleasure their entire life.

The Economy: Buy stuff so we can create jobs!

Also the Economy: Why are you spending money on stuff you don’t need!?

Before I participate in something like this, I ask myself, “Will this make me happy or improve my life in any meaningful way?” Once I’ve determined that it won’t, I cave in to FOMO anyway, for the hand of Satan clenches me in its grasp and guides me as we walk backward into hell.

---

The blistering sun radiates at a sharp angle and gale-force winds of entitlement rush through this fantastically packed arsenal of ravenous, well-heeled egg divas and hordes of neurotic morning freaks. Everyone here, for some reason, upspeaks to the point where all their sentences — even matter-of-fact statements—sound like a question. With each passing minute, the ambient white noise of frenetic laughter grows into raw and earsplitting bursts of shrieks.

One of the most insidious aspects of our prolonged lockdowns is that it forced millions of people to eat their own cooking for several months. This is why brunch is so magical: It brings out the worst, pickiest people imaginable. A goddamn circus with multiple rings, all teeming with needy, egotistical, starving animals discharging most of their funky energy through subdued passive-aggressiveness. Satiating these proudly bedraggled beasts can either be a simple task (sticking a Bloody Mary in their hand and hoping for the best) or a Herculean effort of conspicuous decadence, riddled with potential social disasters that could rival Chernobyl or Ye’s presidential run. The great hope of this pandemic upending American life was never a match against hip boîtes with an abundance of Hollandaise sauce.

Brunch is a clash of urbanite subcultures, united by ridiculous requests and an avant-garde approach to meals, where the concept of eating is secondary to being seen near food. The lost souls found at these gatherings can be segmented into several personality types:

1. Those who handle checks like a hostage negotiator.

2. The hungover person in last night’s clothes who only speaks in growls.

3. Hoards of women looking like lions who shop at Sephora, engaged in dire debates over the optimal amount of background light and cheekbone protrusion to constitute the ideal selfie.

4. Emaciated hipsters sporting Mork & Mindy suspenders, ornate tattoos of parallelograms, and an unironic Mr. Pringles mustache. They mention their gluten allergy whenever they’re not bragging about the typewriter they bought because of their man-crush on Ernest Hemingway (even though Ernest Hemingway would drunkenly sucker punch guys like them).

5. The obnoxious, borderline-alcoholic Chads dressed in gingham and khaki. They assert their musical choices as though the restaurant were a side stage at Coachella while failing to see the irony of blasting 2Pac jams during a meal almost exclusively enjoyed by gentrifiers.

6. The person who excessively says “thank you” with a high-pitched inflection but leaves a 10% tip.

In the retrospect of a drawn-out plague, I suppose this beats another day of glancing out a window or sitting at any other trendy upscale café that experiments with kale and could be best described as Goop on peyote. So I will trek forward and heed Ron Swanson’s advice: “When I eat, it is the food that is scared… There will be alcohol there, so I will go as well.”

---

The brunch-industrial complex typically rumbles from 10 in the morning to three in the afternoon, but at what point does it become merely breakfast or lunch, or do meals now exist on a spectrum? I’ve drunkenly wolfed down Grand Slams after last call and no one makes a show out of that; I’m just considered a late-night/early-morning degenerate waging jihad on my large intestine. The portmanteau “brunch” is believed to be first uttered by a British writer named Guy Beringer when he penned a clairvoyant piece called “Brunch: A Plea” for Hunter’s Weekly in 1895. He had high hopes for this earlyish-morning affair, describing it as “cheerful, sociable, and inciting” that “puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.”

It’s now 12:15 in the afternoon, our grouchy bellies grumbling, and we’re still deliberating our options. “What are you getting, babe?” my girlfriend inquires, her hand gently grazing my shoulder. When dealing with large groups, I typically opt for family style. But everyone here is searching for the specific dish that accentuates their Instagram-as-diary brand, succumbing to the faint electric thrill of exerting a territorial bloodlust over their selection. I’m scouring through a staggering array of choices, like culinary Hinge. A sense of unease and dread envelopes me and I’m overwhelmed and bombarded with inventive dishes made of unusual combinations of ingredients with abstract adjectives. Eggs Benedict made with jamón Ibérico and duck eggs. Why does this exist, and why am I mildly aroused?

Even if an establishment’s menu states no substitutions or modifications, people will still try and craft their order into a Rube Goldberg contraption of tedious asks. My industry pals have described tickets where the special requests took up more space than the order itself. These inconsolable maniacs want an organic egg white omelet no oil and hash browns no oil. Or strawberry cream cheese-stuffed French toast, but dairy-free, still stuffed — with something. At the apex of urban sophistication, one does not simply settle for regular French toast with strawberries.

So after rigorous debate and indecisiveness and steadfast certainty and eventual buyer’s remorse, a table of four arrived at an order of:

Classic Eggs Benedict

Sub grits, no hash browns, hard-poached egg.

House Burger

Cooked medium, sub chihuahua cheese for goat cheese, add bacon, no tortilla strips, no chipotle mayo

Smoked Turkey Sandwich

Sub gouda for gruyere, no bacon, no tomato, spinach on the side, sub grits, no fries

Eggs Florentine

No spinach, sub grilled mushrooms, grits

Reese’s Pancakes

Banana on the side, no whip, no white chocolate sauce, one-third the normal serving of Reese’s

Chorizo Omelette

Hold queso fresco, no house potatoes, add mushroom, extra avocado

33 Omelette

Extra provolone, feta, gouda, chihuahua

Pulled Pork Benedict

Pulled pork on the side, no English muffins, Hollandaise on the side

Portobello Wrap

No home fries, no feta cheese, extra avocado

Aztec Omelette

No corn, no onions, no tomato, no spinach, no garlic

Southern Style Chicken Sandwich

Cheddar, add bacon, no jalapeño coleslaw, add avocado, grill instead of deep-frying buttermilk chicken breast

Yeah, our food is definitely getting spat on.

---

When our opulent and obscene banquet finally arrives, it resembles everything that is amazing and terrible about America. I now understand why the terrorists hate our freedom. And as everyone whips out their phones to document this gluttonous excursion, I imagine them gliding through every one of their Instagram posts with the bright little screen reflecting off their eyes cinematically, and with each passing hour, their face assumes a more horrified expression and scary music reaches a crescendo as they glance on a comment like: “Brnch is basic aF, no one care’s about ur life; you imbecile. you stupid moron”

We eventually find ourselves drifting through a malignant post-mimosa fog, our wallets lightened by 60-something bucks wasted on a few eggs and unnecessary carbs, bellies full and spirits empty. Even if brunch is foolish or indulgent, perhaps the friendship and bonding it fosters isn’t. Book clubs are an excuse to drink wine, sports are an excuse to drink beer, first dates are an excuse to drink cocktails, and family gatherings are an excuse to take enough Xanax to kill a thoroughbred. Similarly enough, brunch justifies your intoxication into an alter ego named “Simple Pleasures,” a suave small-talker who simulates sociability with people who have barely enough overlapping interests.

But these routines are a rare and magical thing these days, an allegiance to the gathering of an ad hoc family that serves as a pleasant spiritual anchor in your calendar. If you’re lucky, you may have fallen into a “brunch squad” or any kind of these groups or rituals at some point over the course of a lifetime. Most people have to contrive these communions artificially, through bowling leagues or church groups or get-togethers with office “colleagues” (which actually might be one of the most insidious words in the English language).

These are the idyllic sweet spots, the archipelagos of ecstasy surrounded by dreary run-throughs of routines and nonsensical tedium. The decline phase of Pax Americana could lead anyone into a sorry state of needing a vibe check. Hopefully, at least a few times during these periods, you might have the awareness or mindfulness to look up from your myopia with a pastoral calm and notice, this is nice.

Ah, who am I kidding? I could’ve hosted this at my apartment for a quarter of the price.

---