Sunday brunch is a meal that many a Saturday-night reveler drags themselves to bleary-eyed on a Sunday, in the hope that they will find the cure they seek in tall glasses of spiced and spike tomato juice, and plates of eggs and hollandaise.
British writer Guy Beringer is believed to be the first person to use the word brunch in print. In his article Brunch: A Plea, which appeared in Hunter Weekly in 1895, he wrote: "Instead of England's early Sunday dinner, a post-church ordeal of heavy meats and savoury pies, why not a new meal, served around noon, that starts with tea or coffee… By eliminating the need to get up early on Sunday, brunch would make life brighter for Saturday night carousers."
Beringer may have been inspired by the traditional post-hunt breakfast. In 19th century Britain, the aristocracy were known to indulge in lavish breakfasts quite late in the day, once their fox hunts had come to a close. Jessup Whitehead, food columnist for Chicago's Daily National Hotel Reporter and cookbook author, published The Steward's Handbook: A Guide to Party Catering in 1889. In it, he laid outa post-hunt breakfast, which includes café au lait, vanilla milk, tea and liquers. The food menu is long, and includes apple marmalade, apricot jam, stewed prunes with clotted cream, broiled kidneys, salmon steaks, potted pigeons and pressed tongues. I can't see pressed tongues taking off as a modern hangover cure but the combination of sweet and savoury in this century-old meal bears a resemblance to our contemporary approach to weekend brunch.
Beringer's brunch was referenced in an 1896 issue of Punch magazine. "To be fashionable nowadays we must 'brunch'. Truly an excellent portmanteau word… indicating a combined breakfast and lunch."
Even though brunch staple Eggs Benedict are thought to have been invented in the late 1800s by a hungover customer of the Waldorf Hotel in New York, the brunch trend took a little longer to hit the United States.
Brunch was championed by hotels, probably because most restaurants were closed on Sundays. I read on Smithsonianmag.org that “Hollywood stars making trans-continental train trips frequently stopped off in Chicago to enjoy a late-morning meal” in the 1930s. Stars such as Clark Gable were seen indulging in brunch at the Pump Room at Chicago’s Ambassador East Hotel, as a stop-off between their New York to LA train journeys.
I still associate brunch with New York City life, largely thanks to watching Sex and the City at an impressionable age. I was seduced by the unsurpassable glamour of meeting your girlfriends for a Saturday-night de-brief over cocktails (cocktails!) and eggs on a Sunday morning. In the late 1990s and early noughties in Dublin, the Odessa Club and the late, great Mermaid Café with Chef Temple Garner at the helm on Dame St owned the brunch scene. Finally, I too could be cured by a Bloody Mary, and experience first world problems of brunch anxiety (will we get a table? God help us, will they be out of eggs benedict?!)
But brunch is tougher on the restaurants providing them than the hungover customers partaking in them. Gabrielle Hamilton, chef and owner of Prune in New York City, provides a fascinating insight into what brunch is like behind the scenes in her memoir Blood, Bones and Butter (2011). Prune has only 30 seats, and on an average Sunday, Hamilton says that they did more than 200 customers for brunch on a Sunday in just five hours.
“Sunday brunch is like the Indy 500 of services at Prune. There is a roaring, thunderous stampede every 40 minutes as hordes of hungry, angry, tricked-out customers line up at the door, scrape the chairs back, take their seats, blow through their steak and eggs. The line is two full seatings long at 9.30am even though we don’t open the doors until 10am. They are waiting for the “go” flag. Some have physically harmed the hostess as they sprint to get a table.”
Since I stopped drinking alcohol a few years back and banished hangovers from my life, brunch has lost its sense of urgency. However, I still love the kick of a decent Virgin Mary on a Sunday afternoon, and Super Miss Sue on Drury St has one of the best in Dublin. Elsewhere, Established Coffee in Belfast has the great advantage of having a singularly crafted cup of coffee to offer alongside its waffles. Galway is a good town for brunch, with Ard Bia's weekend brunch and perhaps my favourite brunch in the country being served up by Jessica and David Murphy at Kai.
In my mind, nowhere in Ireland does brunch quite like Forest Avenue on Sussex St in Dublin. Their five-course tasting brunch menu, served on a Saturday only, is an unbeatable celebration of the long, luxurious meal where breakfast meets lunch. Booking is essential, but you could join the queue at their no-reservations little-sister restaurant, the gastronomic wine bar Forest & Marcy, from 2pm on Sundays.
