Table for One
I Think We Can All Agree That This Is the Worst Meal to Pay For
This week, our Table for One columnist is staying in.
Table for One is a weekly column by Senior Editor Eric Kim, who loves brunching alone and seeks to celebrate the beauty of solitude in its many forms.
I have a proposition: Let’s cancel brunch. Or at least, what it’s become: waking up before noon on the weekend, followed by an hour-long wait for overpriced food and sugary cocktails at a crowded restaurant.
Who ever said this was a good idea?
There’s always that one friend who suggests it first. Let’s meet at 11 a.m. on a Sunday, 50 minutes outside of where we all live.
I’m always that friend who casually inches the meeting time closer to 2 to 3 p.m. Everyone agrees (for the most part).
The thing is, brunch was meant to be fun. Most sources concur that Guy Beringer coined the word first, in an 1895 Hunter’s Weekly essay titled “Brunch: A Plea,” as an antidote to having to wake up early for no reason. According to Beringer, the “world would be kinder and more charitable if” we all slept in on Sunday, skipping breakfast and opting instead for a late meal no sooner than noon.
Brunch is, he asserted, "cheerful, sociable, and inciting. It is talk-compelling. It 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.” Not only would such a meal allow for more revelry into Saturday evening, it would also omit the need for breakfast, which is, in Beringer’s words, “consoling, but not exhilarating.”
I’ve never been much of a breakfast person myself: I prefer a single six-minute egg most mornings, if only to stave off the black coffee from burning a hole into my stomach, maybe a crunchy salad on the weekend (if I happen to wake up early enough).
But a late breakfast, early lunch? Blunch? I can get down with that.
This doesn’t solve the issue of going out for it, which is, I think, what makes brunch so terrible these days. The brunch menu at a restaurant is often the chef’s afterthought. As William Grimes reported for The New York Times, “Chefs hate brunch.”
According to celebrity chef Bobby Flay, “They hate cooking it and they hate thinking about it. Saturday night tends to be the busiest of the week, and they've probably gone out to have a few drinks afterwards. Suddenly it's Sunday morning and they have to come in and cook eggs.”
“Brunch is total garbage,” our test kitchen director Josh Cohen agrees. “There’s nothing more disappointing than going to a restaurant you’re excited about on a Sunday, only to realize they’ve switched out the menu for a selection of dumb eggs.”
“It’s rare that chefs put as much love into their brunch menu as they do their dinner menu,” food stylist and recipe developer Amelia Rampe tells me. “The servers are usually lower quality, too.”
“Hungover,” Cohen chuckles.
One way to solve this problem is to just cook your own brunch. For me, that’s the perfect medium: a way for me to enjoy the food—which is always varied and bountiful at brunch—without all the people, the commute, and most importantly, the cost.
"Brunch is just a reminder that I’m not rich or a model," food editor Jesse Szewczyk laments.⠀
On Sundays, anyway, I want nothing more than to sleep in as late as possible and, of course, to putter about my kitchen slowly and leisurely.
The keyword here is "leisurely": Eggs are for breakfast on the go. Brunch, on the other hand, is for the things you don’t have time to make Monday through Friday: French toast, grits, maple-candied bacon, etc.
Brunch is the kind of food you make not just because you want to eat it, but because you want to relish in the cooking of it, as well.
There’s nothing more satisfying than composing a plate of your favorite foods, each part perfected exactly how you like—then taking it to bed to eat alone, curled up with a good book.
| 1 | large organic egg |
| 2 | tablespoons whole milk |
| 1 | pinch ground cinnamon |
| 1/4 | teaspoon pure vanilla extract |
| 1 | pinch kosher salt |
| 1 | slice bread, such as brioche, about 1-inch thick |
| 1/4 | cup panko bread crumbs |
| 1 | tablespoon unsalted butter |
| Maple syrup, for serving |
| 1 | large organic egg |
| 2 | tablespoons whole milk |
| 1 | pinch ground cinnamon |
| 1/4 | teaspoon pure vanilla extract |
| 1 | pinch kosher salt |
| 1 | slice bread, such as brioche, about 1-inch thick |
| 1/4 | cup panko bread crumbs |
| 1 | tablespoon unsalted butter |
| Maple syrup, for serving |
| 2 to 4 | slices bacon (however many you can eat in one sitting) |
| Maple syrup | |
| 1 | cup water |
| 1/4 | cup whole milk |
| 1/4 | cup quick-cooking grits |
| 1 | tablespoon unsalted butter |
| 1 | packet (5g) roasted seaweed snack, crushed with your hands |
| Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste |
| 2 to 4 | slices bacon (however many you can eat in one sitting) |
| Maple syrup | |
| 1 | cup water |
| 1/4 | cup whole milk |
| 1/4 | cup quick-cooking grits |
| 1 | tablespoon unsalted butter |
| 1 | packet (5g) roasted seaweed snack, crushed with your hands |
| Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste |
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Written by: Eric Kim
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41 Comments
For me, the last straw was the Bloody Marys. Years ago, the Girlfriends insisted on going to the In brunch spot, which, big surprise, featured Bloody Marys. At the time, they were like $9 each, and they were always trying to get you to upgrade to a double, or Grey Goose, or something for even more. Sure, they were good, but I could not understand why my friends went crazy for them. I'd ask about the mix and the waiter was always evasive.
Once I needed change for the parking meter and had to go to a satellite bar to get it. There, the bartender was mixing Skol vodka with Spicy Hot V-8 juice. I asked if that was the "secret recipe". She shrugged. I looked around the bar. Not a bottle of Grey Goose in sight.
Lesson Learned!
A brunch place based on a very popular Denver based am eatery.
That place in Denver spawned many copycats across the country.
People went brunch crazy just like so many other trends through the years.
It’s all a bell curve.
Brunch at home is my favorite. We often invite other friends with children! A gazillion times more relaxing than brunch out.
I love your writing, and judging from the amount of comments you get, so do many others! Thank you for also providing much needed Asian American perspective to the food world.
Maybe here in NZ our chefs are less jaded or maybe it's because competition for the dining out dollar is fiercer but, brunch is usually lovely. Although, not eating eggs limits my choices enormously, my local cafe's mushroom Benedict with lime hollandaise although hardly avant garde, IS very very good and a welcome treat. That said l would laugh at anyone who suggested brunch as early as 11. On a Sunday that's firmly in the breakfast time slot.
It might be more interesting for diners and chefs to have a Sunday afternoon or evening pot luck or table de hote meal, using up leftovers in new dishes before the restaurant closes down for a day or two.
But there's nothing more leisurely on the weekend than throwing something on whenever you happen to wake up, hopping over to a local good brunch spot, having them make you something that would take you a few hours and much dishwashing to do. (Eggs benny, piles of homefries, fresh-baked pastries....) Let alone a mimosa without cracking open a huge bottle, maybe killer fresh-squeezed oj, or a cappuccino instead of the usual black coffee. And as long as the line isn't long, I'd take a little reading or extra conversation with friends in line over a pile of dishes.
I do love going out for breakfast, though. Usually at 8:30 or 9 on Saturday, at a restaurant that just does breakfast and lunch. Better yet, a Mexican place, so I can get chilequiles or something.
I don't actually like cooking breakfast for myself. It feels like too much effort and just adds to the dishes I'll need to do later that day. If I'm not going out, i usually just don't eat until lunchtime, right before I go grocery shopping for the week.
and a plate of wholewheat or buckwheat pancakes. PLAIN!!! not a maple syrup kind of gal...oh a plate of fresh fruit a necessary item...and good friend or two to join me
Secondly, yeah...going out for brunch is blah for the most part. Overpriced and underwhelming. (I exclude the wonderful land of Wisconsin from this criticism). I can see the appeal of meeting up with friends for a meal and day drinking, but the meh factor of every brunch I've gone out to lately kills it. I think it's because unlike Eric, I love breakfast food, and I love having a luxurious, "treat yourself" kind of breakfast on weekends to make up for so many fast-paced workday breakfasts. So when I go out for brunch and it's bad, it's disappointing. Even more so because when I make brunch/late breakfast at home on weekends it's so good - to think I paid $20-30 for sad eggs benedict and an overly sweet cocktail when I could have made myself something like pumpkin bacon pecan pancakes for a fraction of the cost makes me sad.
Brunch in less than an hour isn’t brunch.
Brunch stinks now because I have a choice of some vaguely southern inspired biscuit that isn't any good covered in something else that is okay for $22, or a $40 buffet that's basically no better than cafeteria food. But hey, it's all great because bottomless mimosas, right? Millenials have ruined brunch because it's no longer about good food or even good company, it's about eating trendy things to post on your Instagram and an excuse to drink before noon.
Nailed it.
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