I’m sorry ladies and gents, but brunch sucks. It just sucks! I was looking up playlists the other day on Spotify and I stumbled across a Sunday Brunch playlist (by Spotify), and Losing It by FISHER was on it. May I remind you, it’s 10AM on a Sunday? Either you haven’t gone to bed, or you have a drug problem, because there ain’t no way I’m listening to Losing It by FISHER on a Sunday morning. What’s so wrong with Lionel Richie? A bit of Paul Simon? Maybe the Rolling Stones if you’re in a particularly good mood?
Alright, forget about Losing It playing too loud on the sound system for a moment and think about this instead: smoked salmon. My food nemesis. I know far too many Scandinavians, and they basically live on the stuff. Actually, most of the women I know live on the stuff. Women and Scandinavians. First of all, every piece of salmon you eat has worms in it. Does that sound appetising? Absolutely not. Then, chuck it in a smoker and infuse some of the worst flavours imaginable in it, and what do you get? An expensive piece of wormy ruined fish that overwhelms the breakfast menu. Hard pass.
What to wash down your wormy fish with? Cocktail jugs. 2-for-1 mimosas. What’s wrong with this picture? Did you recently sell the film rights to your long-awaited-to-be-recognised novel overnight and have to celebrate immediately? Again, did you not go to sleep last night? Are you dead set on celebrating your birthday that just so happens to fall on a Sunday as soon as you wake up? Who enjoys drinking before 1pm? Even 12 o’clock is too early. I put people who drink in the morning in the same category as those who have a Monster energy drink as the first thing they taste. And people who drink a beer at the airport for their 7am flight. So bogans and Brits basically, which, let’s be honest, are kind of the same thing.
I have a love/hate relationship with eggs. Some mornings I’m like, “Mhm, nothing I feel like more than some soft boiled eggs and some marmite solider,” and other mornings I’m like, “I literally couldn’t think of anything worse than some soggy unfertilised chicken egg sacs.” Paying £20 for some chicken eggs with Hollandaise sauce (which is just a bland version of Béarnaise sauce, almost like a – how you say – more watéry vérsiòn of mayonnaise) is a hate crime and there’s nothing you can do to convince me otherwise. Perhaps the only exception I would make to this rule is for Granger & Co.’s (i.e. Bills for us Antipodeans) scrambled eggs, but even then it’s borderline.
Which brings me to my next point – why pay all that money for one meal when you could have two? I stand firmly behind my belief that breakfast is the least exciting meal, so if you just want to skip the morning meal and head straight into lunch, that’s okay with me. In fact, that’s largely how I live my life. Spending an absurd amount on breakfast just doesn’t sit right on my conscience, so paying that amount of money for something as wrong as brunch is borderline blasphemy. Blasphemy against the religion of lunch being the second best meal of the day (which is dinner).
If I’m dressing up for dinner, then I agree. If you’re heading out after 6pm, you probably should be dressed in your evening attire, and perhaps even a pair of heels (even if they’re kitten). Wearing heels before 12pm should be reserved for either people working in a law firm, people attending a morning funeral, people coming home from the night before – and that’s it. Everybody else should be immediately sent to jail.
There seems something inherently wrong with having to wear high heels on a Sunday morning. They’re painful enough – why would you want to start your Sunday off on a rough note? If you’re going to a funeral? Fine. But to go eat eggs Benedict around a bunch of screaming girls, and/or their mums giggling about the hot new instructor at their community gym? Yeah, I’ll pass. Who am I trying to impress? The – gag – DJ? I would rather die. I’m very happy lazing in until lunch time, thank you very much, and I’ll see you at the Sunday roast.
Feature image via Wonderland Spring 2022