Monster brunch

Somehow, brunching has become more about grooming than food, laments Sophie White, as she consoles herself with these fabulous fritters

B“It’s become such a scene that your co-diners are rocking a smoky eye at noon on a Sunday”

runch, as a concept, has really started to piss me off. What is it? Breakfast meets lunch meets cocktails is all well and good, but when it’s become such a scene that your co-diners are rocking extensions and a smokey eye at noon on a Sunday, you know that the once-humble brunch has completely lost the run of itself.

At first, I could totally get behind the idea of squeezing another meal into the day, though Himself informs me that most people approach it rather differently — apparently they’re having brunch instead of breakfast and lunch. This is where my first creeping doubts about brunch began. I started to feel a little cheated by having to drop a meal from the schedule. Then I started to notice the unofficial dress code that was emerging at bruncheries all over the city.

There’s plenty to love about brunch. When, at any other point in the week, can we have chips and a steak sandwich for breakfast, for example?

Also, the cocktails are like mini meals in themselves; the average Bloody Mary arrives with a small shellfish buffet balanced atop it, while one popular spot actually offers a bottomless Prosecco deal — basically all-youcan-drink Prosecco over a two-hour period.

Somehow, ordering a bottomless Prosecco on Sunday morning seems way classier than making the same car-crash move on a Friday night, but only if you look the part.

I think it is this alcoholic element of brunch that has upped the ante in the Sunday-morning style stakes. Deeply irritating. I’d like to be rolling down to the brunch place in my ‘house pants’ and usual morning ‘look’ — yesterday’s make-up, paired with matted hair and a musk of unidentifiable origin. However, when there’s day-drinking involved, somehow it’s already a shade too close to derelict behaviour to not put in the effort appearance-wise.

It’s tough for someone like me who, even on the fanciest nights out, never quite manages to get my shit together in the looks department. I love the getting-dressed bit, and I’ll cheerfully slather the face in make-up, regardless of my lack of ability in that department; it’s definitely the hair that really lets me down.

The Bitch Herd gaze upon the weird, near-permanent, single dreadlock that dwells at the back of my head and shake their heads ruefully. Until the grooming required to fit in with the eggs Benedict crowd tones down considerably, I think I’ll be brunching on these fritters in the considerably more low-key homestead, where no one else brushes their hair either.

It’s a pity, because brunch is actually tailor-made for parents. It’s socially acceptable day-drinking, with enough accompanying soakage that you’ll still manage the bedtime stories, albeit with one eye squeezed shut to better focus on the exploits of the Gruffalo.