Like many of my peers, my favorite meal is brunch. So today, I want to outline precisely why brunch is the most fabulous of all the gastronomical experiences.
First of all, I love brunch because of its variety and versatility — there’s no finite menu. Grabbing brunch with a pal could really mean anything! Sometimes it means day drinking with your girl gang, other times it consists of grabbing a breakfast sandwich with your family on a road trip. Perhaps you could even wind up brunching up a storm with your grandma and her closest pals Eileen and Nancy! The possibilities are as endless as the permutations of lunch, dinner and breakfast items you can mix and match.
All of this versatility begs the question, what is brunch? Personally, I define brunch using intentionally ambiguous terms, although there are some things about brunch that are totally unambiguous. First of all, brunch is a meal consumed between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. consisting of the best items from breakfast, lunch or even dinner. The essential aspect of brunch is that it is a time when friends and family come together and genuinely enjoy themselves. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a “working brunch.” Unadulterated merriment with your best friends and closest loved ones is what brunch is all about. Simply put, it’s not a meal you eat alone and it’s not a meal where you conduct serious business. Brunch is about who you’re with, not what you’re eating!
If I were to eat eggs benedict with a mimosa at noon on a Sunday — and I was alone — my brunch food would be devoid of all brunchiness. That sad lonely meal would just be a late breakfast or early lunch or something. Now, say I go on a weekend hike with my best friends: we stop for some snacks around 11 a.m. and someone surprises the group with cupcakes? Now that’s brunch. Or for example you and your roommates decide to have mimosas and cereal for dinner on a Tuesday night for no apparent reason — that’s brunch for dinner.
Brunch is a celebration. I’ve gone to brunches that celebrate graduations, retirements, christenings, 40th birthday parties and Marathon Monday — the list could go on and on. I’ve seen the whole gamut. More often than not, I go to brunches that simply celebrate the fact that it’s the weekend. When I brunch, it’s usually me and a few friends celebrating each other. We pause our hectic lives long enough to swap stories about our weekend escapades, complain about our financial woes and weird jobs. Undoubtedly, there’s a lot of joy and laughter.
I think brunch is particularly special because whether you begin eating at 10 a.m. or 3 p.m., you still have plenty of daylight left to bask in the wonderful post-brunch glow. Spending time with your best friends is invigorating and I personally always feel more productive after a good brunch sesh.
The last point that I’m going to make is this: brunches where you don’t have fun are not brunches. They’re obligatory meetings in disguise. The whole point of brunch is to have fun with great people.
Right now, brunch is very trendy. As someone who likes to remain trendy, I love it. Perhaps it’s so hip right now not only because of the potential for an exquisite insta, but because it’s a time where life slows down just long enough for us to enjoy the people around us. In our fast paced, 24-hour news cycle, tweetstorm ridden day-to day-lives, it’s easy to forget how to relax.
Brunch is a celebration of many of life’s greatest treasures: great food, good friends and most importantly, leisure. If you’re so lucky to have a little time on the weekends to enjoy these gifts, then grab some eggs benedict or some Dunkin’ Donuts with a few pals and have a blast chatting up a storm.
