That 11am danger zone: Exactly what should be on the menu for brunch?

Everyone knows what brunch is: it’s the meal you have instead of having either breakfast or lunch. But not everybody knows what brunch food is, and those people include an awful lot of cafe and restaurant chefs. The portmanteau word has become a portmanteau menu, into which everything is stuffed – just in case.

I empathise. A brunch menu has to allow for the fact that some people really only want breakfast, while others are hanging out for lunch. It must, therefore, have eggs, bacon, toast and avocado, while similarly entertaining thoughts of linguine with prawns, pan-fried snapper and twice-cooked crab souffle. It has to go from a turmeric latte to a Bloody Mary, with many forms of kombucha and spritz between.

Frankly, it’s all too much. This is something we really should address, now that brunch is swimming back into our social lives, grabbed with both hands by those who want to make up for lost time and eat their own body weight in waffles.

So what do we really want brunch to be? Waffles, obviously, and if the pop-up brunch menu at Melbourne’s Cumulus Inc. is any guide, also crumpets with whipped ricotta and rooftop honey, and smoked alpine trout frittata with creme fraiche and salmon roe. Theirs is a pleasingly pared-back menu, something not considered aspirational by most purveyors of brunch.

There are bottomless brunches out there of course, although I’m not convinced by that idea, any more than I would be by a topless one.

Bakery cafes generally do a great brunch naturally with their inside running on croissants, brioche and rich pastries. In Sydney, Loulou Bistro’s next-door boulangerie – with its pain au chocolat and croque-madame (ham and cheese toastie topped with an egg) – is shaping up as a top spot. They even do (adopts cute French accent) a Bloody Marie.

There are bottomless brunches out there of course, although I’m not convinced by that idea, any more than I would be by a topless one. Do you really want to sit there all day drinking champagne and Bloody Marys while eating smoked salmon croissants and twice-baked cheese souffles? Oh, you do? Okay, fine, it takes all types.

The truth, I guess, is that brunch does take all types and has to cater for all needs. It’s a great big mess of so many choices you can get brain-freeze, but we must remember that it is all you have until dinner. And “drunch” is not yet a portmanteau word. Oh, it is?

theemptyplate@goodweekend.com.au

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