THE CASE AGAINST BRUNCH
‘In the neverending sprawl of new condo developments and cashless cafes with walls of white subway tile, brunch has become the ultimate symbol of gentrification’ Claudia McNeilly
Rudy Kurniawan amassed a fortune trading fake fine wine. As shown in the recent Netflix documentary Sour Grapes, Kurniawan sold $24.7 million of bogus bottles at a single auction in 2006. Many of Kurniawan’s fake wines have since been destroyed, but it is estimated that roughly 10,000 counterfeit bottles are still in circulation today. Collectors who bought wine from Kurniawan may suspect that their wine is counterfeit. But no one wants to admit to being scammed, and most collectors would prefer turning a blind eye to the problem instead of discovering that some of the most prized bottles in their collections are fakes.
Spending a fortune on a bottle of counterfeit wine is a highly unrelatable problem, but even the most frugal consumers often get taken advantage of in some way. Printer ink, cell phone data, hotel mini bars and movie theatre popcorn splattered with the neon orange hydrogenated oil that we have come to know as “butter flavouring” are all more expensive than they should be. But among these daily injustices, few scams are quite as insidious as brunch.
Anyone who has set foot inside a grocery store in the last 10 years knows full well that $ 16 is an exaggerated price for two eggs with a few droppings of hollandaise. And yet, every Sunday morning at 11 o’clock, on what should be the most peaceful and leisurely hour of the week, the lines for tepid eggs begin. They start with a few jet-lagged tourists who look like they have been up since six in the morning hungrily pacing the city streets. Then the lifestyle bloggers arrive, wearing a uniform of oversized sunglasses, Rick Owens sneakers and athleisure jogging pants. As a cocktail of dehydration, low blood sugar and caffeine deprivation sets in; the mood stiffens. What began as a mid- morning meal meant to catch up with friends and family quickly turns into a stressful and time-consuming ordeal.
Most rational people know that brunch is just breakfast with a little bit of makeup. The food is almost always a disappointment. Eggs, to start, are a horrible thing to eat in a restaurant setting. Not only do scrambled eggs go cold by the time the server carries them from the kitchen to your table, but it is also near impossible to successfully maneuver a runny yolk into your mouth without looking like the monster from Frankenstein. And yet, no other meal boasts a cult-like following quite like the breakfast lunch duo. Brunch is not just a meal; it is an institution, an unstoppable culinary force.
Of course, food is only half the ap- peal of brunch, a meal that also presents a weekly opportunity to get completely trashed before two in the afternoon. Knowing that most brunchers see eggs as a classy means to getting day- drunk, many restaurants offer bottomless mimosas as part of a boozy brunch package. The price of these unlimited mimosas tends to be about $ 20, meaning that partaking in the bottomless deal always seems like a great idea. However, if the price seems too good to be true, that’s because it is. Bottomless brunch mimosas are usually a combination of watered down Baby Duck sparkling wine that has been mixed with the type of orange juice that was once in the frozen shape of a cylinder. Either that, or they’re being made with the leftover dregs of wine bottles from the night before.
You can’t serve real endless mimosas for $ 20 per person without hemorrhaging money, and brunch is often treated like a cash cow. The high profit margins of cheap ingredients like eggs, potatoes and bread drenched in buttery sauce pads the bottom line for many restaurants. Thanks to weekly brunch specials, the meal also offers chefs an opportunity to turn a profit on ingredients they would otherwise throw away. Even the butter at brunch is being squeezed for all it’s worth. Anthony Bourdain famously accused restaurants of reusing unused table butter to make hollandaise. Of course no chef would ever admit to this, but the jury on hollandaise as a biohazard is still out.
But beyond the bad food and the watered down cocktails, brunch is also a symbol of demographic shift and displacement, and the skyrocketing prices of commercial and residential rents. In the never-ending sprawl of new condo developments and cashless cafes with walls of white subway tile, brunch has become the ultimate symbol of gentrification. A neighbourhood has not truly “arrived” until you can go there to eat a $16 frittata.
Regardless of what one thinks about gentrification, it is impossible to deny that brunch is the inevitable culmination of yuppiedom in all its forms. An unbridled enthusiasm for brunch displays an absence of sensitivity and self-awareness.
The world is full of problems that are far worse than brunch. But like owning an expensive bottle of fake wine, the only thing better than ignoring reality is admitting the truth. Brunch is garbage, and everything about it has been designed to scam us into thinking it’s great.