A Brief History of Brunch: The World’s Most Divisive Meal
The “brunch industrial complex” had spread across New York City “like a virus,” a New York Times columnist declared in 2014. Whether it’s outrage over paying gratuitous amounts for a buffet of overcooked eggs and mediocre pastries or a primal hatred of avocado toast — no meal incites anger quite like brunch. One lawyer even sued to end bottomless brunches, and the day-drinking-havoc they inspire. For many, brunch conjures images of hipsters, yuppies, and millennials shirking responsibility every Sunday morning in favor of sleeping in and enjoying lengthy, drunken dining with friends. Of course, the tradition of brunch was actually born long before the first millennial, and the modern hatred of brunch is baked into its very origin story
At its core, brunch has always been about defying norms. It was first written about in August 1895 by writer Guy Beringer, who really wanted an excuse to sleep in late on Sundays. So he invented a meal that would let him do just that.
Beringer didn’t like waking up early for Church, and he imagined brunch as a rejection of that expectation. Instead of rising early to be pious, you could sleep in and enjoy a “cheerful, sociable, and inciting meal,” as he explained in the magazine article, “Brunch: A Plea.” A portmanteau of “breakfast” and “lunch,” brunch was a special Sunday event which Beringer suggested should begin around noon or half-past and consist of “fish and one or two meat courses.” Essentially, brunch would be a pleasing alternative to waking early for “Saturday-night carousers,” who could, presumably, now carouse without “fear of the next morning’s reaction.” He also helpfully concludes with the note, “P.S. — Beer and whiskey are admitted as substitutes for tea and coffee.” Basically, brunch was a way to party harder, skip out on church, and continue your party into Sunday. If you could afford it, of course.
Brunch was, from the beginning, meant to be a particularly leisurely affair. As Beringer put it, brunch “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.’’
Though little else is known about the Father of Brunch, the meal he invented has become a cultural phenomenon. It proliferated first in Victorian Britain among the upper class, who would dine late after a fun morning spent hunting. It was eventually exported to urban America, and evidence suggests that by the 1920s, New York, New Orleans, and Chicago all had their own brand of fledgling brunch culture. (In Chi-town, the meal livened up a bicoastal celebrity’s transcontinental train stopover.) By the ’30s, there was a veritable brunch boom, and in 1939, the Times declared Sundays to be officially a two-meal day. Of course, the food people brunched on might look a bit unfamiliar to modern diners: A 1940s Times article notes that Fifth Avenue Hotel served a “Sunday Strollers’ Brunch’’ which was comprised of “sauerkraut juice,” “clam cocktails,” and “chicken liver omelet.” Yum.
Church attendance declined sharply after World War II, which only helped the growing brunch trend. For 1950s Americans, brunch was mostly enjoyed from the comfort of their home. Increasingly though, as women entered the workforce, they too wanted a break from cooking on the weekend. So, they started going to brunch in groups and taking a much needed respite from their dual duties as workers and homemakers. By the consumption-happy 1980s, brunch became a staple event at urban diners, restaurants, and hotels, with a specific trend towards motley, all-you-can-eat buffets. Sociologist Farha Ternikar, who wrote Brunch: A History, described 1980s brunch as such: “They have no theme, no real menu. You could be eating eggs and tacos for brunch.” Since then, a highly-commercialized brand of brunch has been going strong.
Importantly, brunch popularized day-time drinking, which was previously taboo, particularly for women and middle-class folks. In the early days of brunch, (which coincided with Prohibition), pretty much only the wealthy, male bruncher could imbibe without raising eyebrows. But coed boozy brunches started proliferating in New York City in the late ’70s, and Bloody Marys and mimosas have been staples of it ever since.
While brunch previously spoke to Americans’ rejection of church, or desire to get crunk during the day, today’s brunch is transgressive for a different reason: It’s a complete rejection of the cutthroat hustle society that millennials exist in. Brunch is a rare moment of calm for a generation of 24/7 workaholics who tend to spend Happy Hour checking work emails.
So hectic are our lives that, most days of the week, the average American doesn’t even eat breakfast, according to one recent survey. In our time-strapped haze of workday blues, we’re more likely than ever to forgo the so-called most important meal of the day. Brunch, in theory, might act as a kind of corrective antidote, supplying the leisurely morning nosh that we’ve been missing all week.
But the idea of leisure is also what makes brunch such a flashpoint of conflict. Brunch is a meal that can only be enjoyed by people who have the time and money to consume it, and the alcoholic drinks typically associated with it. As Ternikar puts it, “brunch became a meal of leisure, comfort, and often decadence in the American cultural imagination.” Add to that the “all-you-can-drink” menus of today, and the associated daytime drunken buffoonery that accompanies it, and you can see why the meal is so divisive. Even if you’re not living in the congested streets of Manhattan, you can’t avoid brunch: It’s typically plastered all over social media. What began as a relatively-private meal for wealthy people has become a totally public event people engage in to affirm their social capital. According to Ternikar, the performance of brunch is important to understanding the conflict that surrounds the meal. Basically, brunch is a place where we can flex our fancy taste in food or show off the fact that we can afford a Bloody Mary garnished with fried chicken (which is a real thing). Bucking convention is a lot less fun when it’s exclusively for the rich.
But, ultimately, a meal is what you make of it. Whether you enjoy a homemade spread of scrambled eggs and toast or splurge on an afternoon out at a bougie restaurant with $12 cocktails, you can still indulge in the brunch ethos of slowing the hell down — taking the time to enjoy breakfast food, chat with friends, and forget about your side hustle for an hour or two. Beringer would approve.
