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Brunch
Tales
By
B.A. Nilsson
“For
it’s Sunday morning breakfast time,
The time all men adore!
Why don’t the poets go into rhyme
And rave about it more?”
—Cole
Porter
Sunday
brunch gets a bad rap in chef Anthony Bourdain’s hilariously
revealing book Kitchen Confidential, in which he no
doubt correctly notes that it can turn into a dumping ground
for unsold Friday and Saturday specials. I think, however,
that it has earned a certain amount of scorn from those in
the business because it requires you to rise early, and work
after putting in a punishing shift Saturday night. And no
restaurant worker I ever knew just went home to bed after
closing on Saturday.
The origins of brunch as a restaurant meal continue to elude
me, but the so American-seeming word itself is actually a
Britishism. As an article in an 1895 issue of the British
humor magazine Punch noted, “To be fashionable nowadays
we must ‘brunch.’ Truly an excellent portmanteau word, introduced,
by the way, last year, by Mr. Guy Beringer, in the now defunct
Hunter’s Weekly, and indicating a combined breakfast
and lunch.”
Back in 1935, when Cole Porter celebrated it, the word “brunch”
had yet to make its way into common American parlance. According
to H.L. Mencken, “Brunch, designating a combination
of breakfast and lunch, eaten around noon, appeared in England
about 1900, but it was thirty years later before it began
to make any headway on this side of the water. On April 10,
1941, the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York was advertising a
‘Sunday strollers’ brunch, $1 per person, served from 11 AM
to 3 PM’ in the Villager.”
My whimsical belief is that brunch was invented to showcase
a single entrée: eggs Benedict. There are many felicitous
food combinations, but eggs Benedict is one of the few truly
perfect assemblies.
The most credible origin story credits a Wall Streeter named
Lemuel Benedict with inventing the dish in 1894 at the Waldorf
Hotel, in a quest to quell the ill-effects of a party the
night before. He asked for “some buttered toast, crisp bacon,
two poached eggs, and a hooker of hollandaise sauce,” so impressing
the Waldorf’s maître d’hôtel, Oscar Tschirky, that he reworked
the dish slightly and put it on the menu. (The creative Tschirky
also is credited as the source of Thousand Island dressing,
Waldorf salad and veal Oscar.)
Another story suggests that the dish originated at Delmonico’s
in 1893 when Mrs. LeGrand Benedict enlisted the help of that
restaurant’s maître d’ to come up with a new breakfast item.
In any event, the combo of English muffin, Canadian bacon,
poached eggs and hollandaise sauce not only is unbeatably
rich but also does seem to chase those morning-after blahs
away. Especially when conjoined with the therapeutic power
of a Bloody Mary.
Should the dining public be more grateful? This was the question
I always asked when, somewhat bleary myself, I faced the brunch-hungry
horde of a Sunday.
In most restaurants, meal items are priced based on two considerations:
food costs and exclusivity. Some restaurants use a simple
food-cost multiplier to calculate entrée fees, but there’s
also a need to determine the proper clientele. The whiner
who agonizes over the Country Buffet price won’t be happy
forking over $21.99 for a peppered lamb loin with Asiago polenta.
But brunch gives the proletariat access to fancy restaurants.
The reasoning, if there is any, could be that it’s a lower-cost
opportunity to sample a restaurant’s fare—although the menu
usually is quite different. Unfortunately, as the Entertainment
Book coupons have proven, those who get a discount tend to
return only when another discount is offered. (This I have
witnessed both as a waiter and a chef.)
Because it was called the Horse and Hound, the restaurant
where I worked in South Salem, N.Y., was brunch-visited regularly
by members of the Westchester County Hunt Club. You think
hunt club and you think Grande Olde England; you think of
refinement and of pinkies crooked whilst sipping tea. You
think incorrectly.
This boorish aggregation descended in a flurry of shrieks
and ugly clothing. Food that was praised in the other dining
room was damned by the hunters, whose chaos infected the whole
restaurant and spoiled the experience for the others, even
though we seated them as far away as possible.
For the chef, it was a madhouse—with or without the Hunt Club
in attendance. From 11 to 3 he sent out a nonstop stream of
eggs and meats and sandwiches and such. And we had to keep
a buffet table of salads and breads looking plump and neat.
By 4 PM, as the last of the latecomers finished coffee, we
staggered like the war wounded.
Which made it a relief to go into a kitchen where I shared
line duties with two or three others. Brunch at the Elms Inn
in nearby Ridgefield was, on the whole, an easier-to-manage
affair. A full complement of waiters worked the floor, and
the customers usually were regular visitors.
But there’d be frequent visits from “snowflakes,” as Frank,
one of the waiters, termed them. “Put a money-off coupon in
the paper,” he said, “and they fall on the restaurant like
snowflakes.”
He had the misfortune to wait on six such one Sunday, a group
whose first-ever visit to the restaurant was a screaming misery.
Nothing was right, as far as they were concerned, and they
left no tip on their way out.
They arrived in two cars; they piled into one to take a tour
of the scenic area. As I returned to work the dinner shift,
I saw that the party had returned and was supervising the
towing-away of the car they’d left behind. For some strange
reason, it wouldn’t start.
Metroland
restaurant reviews are based on one unannounced visit;
your experience may differ.
Food Rating Key: *****
An exciting, fulfilling experience; the food and service are
everything they set out to be. Brillat-Savarin would be proud.
****
Way up there with really good food, definitely worth your
dining dollar. Julia Child would be proud. ***
Average, with hints of excitement. Your mother would be pleased.
**
A dining-out bogey; food probably isn’t the first priority.
Colonel Sanders would be disappointed. *
K-rations posing as comestibles. Your dog would be disgusted.
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