The End of Brunch... Or Is It Just The Begining?

Chicago is the city of big shoulders, right? A place to go if you want lakefront wind to rip the skin off your body or if you want to eat a Polish Sausage the size of an Eastern European newborn. It's also a nice place to get shot, mugged, and/or carjacked. That's the Chicago my father warned me about as a child. "Make your eyes 4," he would say, which I guess was his way of telling me to be twice as careful as normal. Now, though, by "making my eyes 4" I end up just seeing twice as many frickin brunch restaurants with monosyllabic names than I otherwise would. The Monsters of the Midway have embraced brunch, and I think that these times of economic misery will challenge brunch, either wiping it from the Midwestern menu, or engraving it's existence in the souls of all its followers.

Brunch sort of makes sense sometimes. Say you stay out late on a Friday night. You wake up next to a stranger in a strange place or on a couch opposite your best friend. Either way, you need something safe. You need to go to a comfortable place with hints of womb-like ambiance in the form of smooth jazz, maple syrup, complex compotes, expensive refills, and the alluring draw of menu items accompanied by home fries for no extra charge. I understand why brunch became popular. Some people wake up early, some wake up late. Some have headaches or sore muscles from the previous night's antics, and some are anxious to begin their laundry list of laundry related tasks for the day. In any case, caloric consumption is absolutely necessary, and brunch offers it for a reasonable price.

The reason that these socially unifying establishments could either sink or fly (sink or swim is too obvious, what's the other option? treading water?) during times of recession revolves around our perception of what exactly they are, and what they offer us. For many, brunch is an exciting event to be experienced and shared between friends. Brag about your baby's ability to count, suggest your superior economic status by ordering Eggs Benedict or a Mimosa, or exaggerate your slightly romantic experience from the night before. Brunch, in these cases, is like an expensive watch. It's something you don't really need because you already have a cell phone to tell you what time it is, but that you have as an indulgence and as a way to tell the world, "Check it out! I have multiple time pieces on my person! ASK ME WHAT TIME IT IS!!! I DARE YOU!!!!".

If you go to brunch because of the above, then economic hardship will surely ruin the industry. It will become harder and harder to buy several mimosas if that money is being taken out of your dog's weekly grooming budget, or from the money set aside for your baby's formula. If, however, you're like me and go to brunch only because participating in the event makes it socially acceptable to skip a meal and thus save a good $5 without raising anorexic suspicion, then, well, the brunch business may be about to explode.

For $10 I can get plenty of coffee, a handful of eggs, some chopped vegetables, maybe even some cheese, breakfast meats or a facon type product, toast, potatoes, water, syrup, ketchup, Tabasco.....the list goes on. If I wake up late enough and draw out the experience long enough (as I am doing at this very moment by blogging between bites) I can fool my body and my company into believing that I've actually just finished my second meal of the day.

The debate about the future of brunch will likely go on into the distant future. Our grandchildren will either have the option of eating Micky Mouse pancakes right next to Macaroni and Cheese, or they will be seeing dramatizations of the archaic meal performed by aspiring thespians on late night Food Network dramas. Either way, brunch is here now, and how we approach it conceptually will most likely determine its fate. Are we a people who look to impress through public consumption, or are we deal seeking misers trying to stretch our buck down the street and back.