Brunch is stupid.
I don't mean stupid in a Jerry Seinfeld "Is it breakfast, or is it lunch?" kind of way. In fact, I'm perfectly in favor of overturning the arbitrary distinctions that assign different foods to different periods in the day. Certainly, there are days when I would like a cheeseburger at 7am, or french toast and bacon at four in the afternoon. Rather, I would argue that brunch has become a thing which now stands in opposition to its intended purpose: having a casual late-morning or early-afternoon meal.
On paper, brunch makes perfect sense: you and your partner drag yourselves out of bed at 11am (or 1pm, or 3) on a Sunday, too hungover to cook, and with a level of intellectual function roughly equivalent to that of a particularly dense Labrador retriever, or a hippie. So much so, that you can't even decide what sort of food you want to eat. The solution to this should be simple- go to a place where they will cook food for you, and also provide you with a variety of different options, so that you might have a salade Niçoise, while your partner has eggs Benedict with a side of cake.
Additionally, there is the expectation that this meal should not be especially formal in nature, while still requiring you to wear pants. Brunch is assumed to be a sort of easy-going yet cosmopolitan experience, almost European in nature. Never mind that Europeans don't really do brunch – there are two reasons for this: one, a European's breakfast is typically a really fresh piece of bread or pastry, extremely good coffee, and three cigarettes- brunch food is somewhat alien to them; two, Europeans live most of their lives in a sort of casual yet sophisticated way- they are actually having brunch all the time – there is a belief in North America that brunch should involve lingering over drinks and conversation until some point in the afternoon when everyone is capable of moving on to some other activity, such as an art opening, or thrift shopping, or a walk in the park. Again, given the state of your mind and/or liver on a Sunday morning, this aspect of brunch is perfectly reasonable in theory, even if it does imply consciously setting aside a specific block of time in order to live in a way which Europeans manage to do relatively effortlessly.
Of course, this is never how it works out. First of all, you can't just go anywhere and eat brunch (I mean you could, but the only other places that are open are usually diners, and somehow they just don't capture that sort of ineffable brunch experience. More on this later). Instead you have to go to a brunch place. Most likely it will be one located in some other part of town- usually a neighborhood that is sort of downmarket, artistic, and bohemian (although still probably nicer than the one you currently live in). This means either driving, which you are likely not fit to do on a Sunday morning, or taking public transit, which (at least in the US) can be harrowing at the best of times. Then there is the fact that someone (likely your partner) has invited one or more other couples to have brunch with you. In fact, they may have even planned to go out for brunch ahead of time, again defeating brunch's purpose as an impromptu means of mitigating a hangover. It is also very probable that the couples your partner has invited are even less organized and responsible than yourselves. This means that you are now coordinating location, transit, and arrival times for several people, on a Sunday morning, probably without the benefit of coffee, and with a bloodstream composed mostly of stale beer.
Even if you do manage to get everyone to the correct location, at more-or-less the appointed time, you face yet another problem:
If there is one thing that Portlandia got right, it's the "brunch village" episode. Because you can't just go any old greasy spoon, it has to be a brunch place. And you can't just go to any brunch place, it has to be a nice one. There are two reasons for this.
The first is (as Anthony Bourdain has already established) that everyone involved in preparing and serving your brunch is probably more hungover than you, and almost certainly less happy to be there. This is why a bad brunch service is often shockingly bad. Not only that, but at restaurants that normally serve other meals, brunch can become a means of disposing of leftover or expired ingredients (again, per Bourdain, don't order the frittata).
"Hating you"
The second is status, plain and simple. You might not be going to that new spot in the cool neighborhood because it is the hip place to be. You might be going simply because you're really into "farm-to-table" right now, or because it is run by a cult which serves the most amazing french toast with hand-whipped peach butter. But I assure you that a great many of the people getting brunch there are doing so exactly so that they can tell all their friends about it later. At best, they are having brunch out of some vague expectation that this is simply what young, hip, sophisticated people do, all while ignoring the actual horrors of the brunch experience. Now, given the various social and economic factors surrounding the existence of brunch places – the presence of cool, artsy neighborhoods in a city; the barriers to starting a small restaurant; and the conditions determining a critical mass of young artists, performers, and musicians who will lend a certain aura of bohemianism to your establishment, while still being cheap enough to hire (and not complete fuck-ups) – it is very likely that there will be greater demand for hip brunch places than those places are able to satisfy. This means one of two things: either you will get up at a painfully early hour to beat the rush; or that you will spend at least part of your Sunday morning hungry, hung over, and dangerously undercaffeinated, standing in line for pancakes with berries on them and a $10 mimosa (BTW- fuck mimosas. They're just a way to cover up bad prosecco.). If you're really lucky, it will be raining.
Some brunch places now have servers come and pass out coffee to the line. They are doing God's work. Others will take your phone number and call you when your table is ready, so you can make your way to a nearby cafe to get a coffee, and maybe something to raise your blood-sugar. Guess what- if you are sitting in a cafe drinking coffee and eating a pastry, you are already having brunch. "A-ha-" someone (your partner) might say, "Why don't you just have coffee and a bite to eat at home before going to get brunch?" Guess what else- if you are having coffee and a bite at home before going out to brunch, you are actually eating breakfast in order to go out and get brunch. We've now moved so far from the original purpose of brunch as to render it irrelevant.
"So," you (or your partner) might think, "why don't we just do brunch at home? We'll invite our friends over, try out a couple of new recipes, and avoid dealing with all of that restaurant bullshit." You have visions of the whole gang enjoying scintillating conversation over white wine and lox, in a relaxed and comfortable setting.
This is a trap.
Don't get me wrong- if you are an overnight guest in my house, I will happily make you breakfast. Griddle cakes, omelettes, biscuits and gravy, you name it. It would be my pleasure. I'll fry up some potatoes in duck fat, and we can sit in our robes and drink coffee, and talk shit about people. Similarly, if you come over for dinner, we'll have a great time- we'll eat delicious food, get roaring drunk, and you probably won't leave until 2am.
But neither of these things are brunch. What serving brunch at home actually entails is getting up even earlier (and possibly even going to bed early the night before), making yourself presentable, frantically cleaning the hovel you live in, and cooking food for two different meals, all in time for all of your yahoo friends to show up, hung over and just having fallen out of bed. You and your partner will not enjoy any repartee or witty anecdotes, as you will be too busy making sure the baked brie comes out on time, or dressing the meringues with crème Anglaise and candied peel, while shooting each other icy looks (by this time, you may also have had at least one fight). By the time your guests finally depart, you and your partner will be left day drunk late on a Sunday afternoon, in a house full of dirty dishes, with nothing else to do but contemplate your own mortality as the shadows lengthen across the floor.
Brunch is evil.