In defense of brunch

Dear Hipster:

So, I’m starting to hear of the so-called “anti-brunch movement,” a backlash against brunch, and I have to wonder, what the heck am I supposed to do on Sunday morning if brunch becomes uncool? Do I need to stop having brunch?

— Sandy

The anti-brunch movement is in full swing, and I would tread lightly on the matter. One recent New York Times column, titled “Brunch is for Jerks,” called brunch, “Conspicuous consumption disguised as urbanity!” The author, David Shaftel, doesn’t come right out and say it, but it’s clear that he hates brunch because it’s something that hipsters, “Seasoned with the self-satisfaction of knowing the latest and hippest brunch boîte,” like to do.

He’s right inasmuch as hipsters do, in fact, love brunch. After all, we created it, at least in its present form. Brunch as we know it was forged in the fires of the trendiest kitchens, at the social heart of the trendiest urban neighborhoods, to please the discerning palates of the trendiest urban diners.

Hipsters took brunch away from Easter Sunday and Mother’s Day. We made it our own, crafting an indulgent tradition out of pulled-pork benedicts, stiff drinks, and huge parties. Hipster cooks concocted increasingly elaborate ways to fuse breakfast and lunch foods, creating an entire brunch culture in the process, and we reveled in it; queueing up before the hottest alt-neighborhood enclave, awaiting the chance to worship at the Hollandaise-laden altar of brunch. We would sail Bloody Mary seas atop rafts of bacon and shrimp, drowning one hangover in the beginning of another.

Must we now give brunch a Viking funeral? Casting it adrift into those same seas, blazing with the glory of a thousand stuffed french-toast flambés? I think not. As long as there are bars to close on Saturday night, the demand for a gentler Sunday morning will live on.