Brunch is overrated: On reclaiming the practical joy of a sensible breakfast

I don't get asked to go to brunch very often. I prefer it this way. If someone were to ask me, I'd probably respond with some buzzkill comment anyway, like, "No, I'd rather meet you for a sensible breakfast, say around 8:30 am? We'll have a sturdy meal of eggs, toast and bacon then each go about our days."

I realize this is not a popular take, especially on the weekends, which were invented for laziness and self-indulgence. The thing is, I really like eating breakfast — and, more gobsmackingly, three square meals a day. But brunch doesn't stop at screwing up the poor, Type A person's eating schedule; it is really only satisfied when it has hijacked the entire day. 

As you might've already guessed, I am one of those dreaded early risers besotted by hunger within minutes of waking up, unless I'm hungover or otherwise unwell. Brunch by definition bridges breakfast and lunch, meaning no sane person would ever meet for brunch at 9 or 10 am, before it scientifically starts existing. (Let's face it; even 10:30 feels optimistic.) Thus, I find myself starving on a Saturday or Sunday morning, playing breakfast roulette while on a text chain with my slow-moving friends who swear we're meeting at 10 this time. Should I sneak in a bowl of cereal in case one of these loafers doesn't make the reservation? 

"Running behind! (Laughing emoji)," one inevitably texts at 9:45. "Is 11:30 OK?" — by which point the acceptable window for pre-brunch cereal has closed (red-faced swearing emoji). 

While we're on the subject of sustenance, I must also take issue with brunch food, which I find as unnecessarily over-adorned as a Real Housewife attending a parent-teacher conference. Occasionally, spots will offer something blessedly simple, like vegetable hash with a runny egg. But on the whole brunch menus teem with garish brutes like loaded French toast with candied bacon, nuts, fruit, whipped cream and syrup; breakfast pizzas and burgers; pig's head terrines; and egg sandwiches smeared with fancy paste and piled high with chichi toppings on a chewy bagel or baguette, meaning the fillings all squish out of the sides on first bite. 

"Should we get the truffle fries and a nutella cinnamon roll the size of our heads for the table?" one of my companions asks. Why not? I've already ordered the kind of entree that portends nothing other than an afternoon nap in a La-Z-boy. 

Give me a no-frills, diner-style breakfast at a reasonable hour to set me right: A sturdy mug of coffee with cream alongside a well-contained breakfast burrito, eggs with toast and bacon, oatmeal with berries, or a simple, impeccably ratioed egg sandwich on soft bread. 

Then again, brunch is not about square meals or fueling up for a productive Saturday. It's about unabashed hedonism, the kind that is most likely carrying over from the night before — meaning you're almost unavoidably having cocktails. Indeed, when brunch was catching on in the U.S. in the 1930s, it did so in tandem with hair-of-the-dog cocktails like the Prairie Oyster, with an egg yolk, Lea & Perrins and brandy, and the tomato- and vodka-based Bloody Mary. People would joke that the food-like components and garnishes were like life-saving bits of sustenance (unknowingly goading future generations of bartenders who would go on to garnish the Bloody Mary with beef sliders and whole fried chickens). 

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I'm all for the occasional, well-calibrated Bloody Mary, Irish Coffee or Bellini. (But who on earth invented the Mimosa? Someone under 35, that's for sure. They might as well have named it the Heartburn.) I'm also certainly not against day drinking. Nothing beats the elegance of ordering a glass of white wine at lunch, or the delight of meeting a friend for an impromptu drink in the afternoon. 

But boozing while it's still morning confuses me, given its slippery-slope nature. There's always that one friend at the brunch table with a twinkle in their eye who innocuously asks, "Anyone want to go for one more?" while we're awaiting the check. And just like that, I find myself in bed at 7 pm, sloshed and dinnerless, after spending most of the afternoon ordering "one more" round of rosé and quietly eating most of the charcuterie platter while the others weren't looking.    

By now you must be thinking, "Wow, she sounds like no fun at all!" 

Good. That makes one less person who'll invite me to brunch.