Kitchen pros: why does brunch suck so much

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McMan said:
Things that go with eggs:
--Coffee. Potatoes. Toast.

Things that don't go with eggs:
--a half-pour of champagne-adjacent industrial sparkling wine cut with fruit
--a breakfast negroni spritzer or whatever carbonated hipster abomination tries to bring 'mixology' to the morning

Things that don't go with alcohol:
--eggs*, powdered sugar, whatever "creme" is shoehorned inside whatever bread-pudding-adjacent concoction

*exception: cheap beer
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Brunch is a 7 car pile up on the interstate that people can’t help but slow down and stare at. The absurdity of it all might often be the selling point.
 
Haven't worked in a pro environment for years now. But I remember hating lunch / brunch for the fact that you also had to get your mise-en-place in order for dinner, but you couldn't because you were constantly making lunch. Which meant that, you not only had less time to get your mise-en-place in order, you also had to do MORE mise-en-place now because you had to prepare the brunch / lunch for the next day. This often meant you were doing that after dinner was ready, late at night before cleaning up. When you were just exhausted and wanted to go home :p
 
Eh. I think that some Irish cream might go well with sweet breakfast. Certainly in my coffee if not by itself.

And I would 100% drink a breakfast Negroni. Or a lunch Negroni. Or a dinner Negroni. Or an elevenses Negroni. But keep that spritzer **** at the Idle Hausfrau Boutique where it belongs.
 
It’s various forms of inefficiency. It’s an industrial engineering problem. You decide to run brunch out of a nice dinner restaurant, and then you are:

- shoehorning a menu that is usually egg and fryer heavy into a kitchen designed for dinner cooking. Like ok, what brunchy stuff can we push out of this kitchen? And work around expectations that constrain what constitutes “brunchy”, so load balancing and time-and-motion workflow gets rough.
- adding shifts to your staff that don’t fit the normal schedule and especially for the kitchen don’t constitute full time equivalent positions. Hence the clopen shifts and/or deploying prep cooks as line cooks. Before the doors open, already nobody wants to be there on this s___ detail.
-prepping and ordering another menu, typically with its own ingredients and prep items, on Thursday and Friday. So that squeezes things in the kitchen, and might generate a little resentment or distaste towards brunch before it’s even the weekend. And the flow is discontinuous which is never as good as sustained.
-inviting customers who are not there for the food. Some of them are there to drink, others don’t even care about the drinks because they are there To Brunch as a verb. That may involve drinking but they are unlikely to appreciate a mixologist’s creations, never even mind the chef. That’s why they use the menu as an ingredient list, because they are not there to experience my food unlike the dinner crowd; it’s just something to eat while brunching.

Now what I’d recommend both from a food and experience perspective and also from a not being a dbag perspective is going to eat at a brunch place, the kind that’s open from 7 to 3 and doesn’t do dinner. That place will have a kitchen that is designed or has been built out to push out a smooth brunch; staff who only work mornings; brunch food that is the central focus, not an adjunct to hook in people who don’t care about it anyway although realistically they will still get that crowd (but probably have better systems for handling it) and continuous flow of materiel throughout the week. They’re optimized for what they do as their core business operation. Still stick to the menu though :) and don’t yack in the john, that happens a lot.

ETA: I was at a place that was known for having strong mimosas. What was not as well known is that we didn’t do it for you, we did it because the wine was cheaper than the juice.
 
GorillaGrunt said:
Now what I’d recommend both from a food and experience perspective and also from a not being a dbag perspective is going to eat at a brunch place, the kind that’s open from 7 to 3 and doesn’t do dinner. That place will have a kitchen that is designed or has been built out to push out a smooth brunch; staff who only work mornings; brunch food that is the central focus, not an adjunct to hook in people who don’t care about it anyway although realistically they will still get that crowd (but probably have better systems for handling it) and continuous flow of materiel throughout the week. They’re optimized for what they do as their core business operation. Still stick to the menu though :) and don’t yack in the john, that happens a lot.
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Nice that makes a lot of sense. I have a couple favorites like that back home in Seattle, and honestly that's the type of place I had in mind when I was asking why brunch is so ****** to work. I was confused because they always seemed to nail it and it was like a cherished local institution, at least back in the day.

But I can't guarantee that no one ever yacked in the john 🤣
 
labor of love said:
and all you can drink mimosas.
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GorillaGrunt said:
and don’t yack in the john

I was at a place that was known for having strong mimosas. What was not as well known is that we didn’t do it for you, we did it because the wine was cheaper than the juice.
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The amount of non complementary items going down one’s throat for brunch often makes for a messy bathroom lol
 
DONT EVEN START.

Used to wake up at 3 am for a 5am-3pm shift. Would then have to break down asap for the night crew coming in, which the restaurant "valued" more even tho brunch would do 2-3x the covers.

At another spot, they decided to do brunch 1 time a week and run half the regular menu items with brunch items which meant no space for all the mise on the line. So inefficient setup and xtra prep, xtra headache. And basically everyone that closed the night before would open too.


Don't think I'd hate it so much if its purely a breakfast/brunch spot.
 
captaincaed said:
If you’re in dish pit in a summer Colorado spot with a patio, it’s scrubbing hardened eggs off plates that have cooked on while people linger over drinks. The scrubbing sucks and the water is disgustinger than usual.

But lasagna catering is easily worse.
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"Hold my beer." - Pastry Chef candying stuff
 
sumis said:
pls. elaborate in detail.
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No. I don't think I will.
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chiffonodd said:
Is there a way to brunch without being an a-hole? Or am I complicit just by going? because normally I just wanna go for the different dishes that are offered. I don't request paradoxical impossibilities. Actually i don't request anything other than "I'll have the ______ please."
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Then you aren't brunching right
 
My weekend starts around 5pm on Sunday post brunch and ends Tuesday at 2-3pm when I return. That first beverage Sunday afternoon is always so rewarding after reaching the brunch finish line.
So many restaurant staffs are loaded with kids in their 20s living it up on the weekend with their friends it’s understandable to some degree. And making mistakes is part of growing up.
The salt in the wound for some is going to work early on a weekend in the am to wait on 30-60 year olds actively avoiding whatever responsibility is in their life to get smashed off cocktails around lunchtime on a Sunday.
Was brunch invented as a way of capitalizing on procrastination?
I’m not really trying to put forth an argument or position here just painting a picture of what I often see.
 
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labor of love said:
My weekend starts around 5pm on Sunday post brunch and ends Tuesday at 2-3pm when I return. That first beverage Sunday afternoon is always so rewarding after reaching the brunch finish line.
So many restaurant staffs are loaded with kids in their 20s living it up on the weekend with their friends it’s understandable to some degree. And making mistakes is part of growing up.
The salt in the wound for some is going to work early on a weekend in the am to wait on 30-60 year olds actively avoiding whatever responsibility is in their life to get smashed off cocktails around lunchtime on a Sunday.
Was brunch invented as a way of capitalizing on procrastination?
I’m not really trying to put forth an argument or position here just painting a picture of what I often see.
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In my mistake making years I would work Saturday night. As we were cleaning up around 11 or midnight we would poach and cool a couple hundred eggs for Sunday Brunch buffet egg bennies. Then I would go out with some of the guys to the downtown bars and shut them down at 4am. Wander back to the restaurant and pass out on the shelves under the prep tables. The older more responsible cooks who hadn't partied all night would wake the young guys up when it was time for us to start the buffet. And then half drunk and half hungover I would make omelets for 300-500 drunk football fans until 3 or 4pm. The End
 
stringer said:
In my mistake making years I would work Saturday night. As we were cleaning up around 11 or midnight we would poach and cool a couple hundred eggs for Sunday Brunch buffet egg bennies. Then I would go out with some of the guys to the downtown bars and shut them down at 4am. Wander back to the restaurant and pass out on the shelves under the prep tables. The older more responsible cooks who hadn't partied all night would wake the young guys up when it was time for us to start the buffet. And then half drunk and half hungover I would make omelets for 300-500 drunk football fans until 3 or 4pm. The End
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This story brought tears to my eyes. 🥲
 
I start setting up someone’s station for them once they’re 15 minutes late. Then later the guilt that cook is carrying I use to my advantage for the things I’ll have to get on the fly through the duration of brunch to which he will comply quickly.
Learned this from a Sous that did this to me every brunch when I was in my early 20s. Cycle of life.
 
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labor of love said:
I start setting up someone’s station for them once they’re 15 minutes late. Then later on the guilt that cook is carrying I use to my advantage for the things I’ll have to get on the fly through the duration of brunch to which he will comply quickly.
Learned this from a Sous that did this to me every brunch when I was in my early 20s. Cycle of life.
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Holy crap. That is next level passive aggressive. My compliments.
 
I can see why you might think that. But really we’re just doing things that are mutually beneficial. Love my kitchen staff, and they know that whenever they push the envelope with me I’m expecting some quid pro quo.
 
I only worked brunch shifts in one restaurant for about three months (out of ten years in the business) and I have pretty good memories...

Could be that I had the best short order egg guy I've ever seen working with me. Could also be the amount of illicit substances that that particular crew had on hand...
 
labor of love said:
I can see why you might think that. But really we’re just doing things that are mutually beneficial. Love my kitchen staff, and they know that whenever they push the envelope with me I’m expecting some quid pro quo.
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Fair. I think that the level of passive aggressive is contingent upon the vibe of the act. If, as in your case, it's really meant as helpful, but also good natured 'you owe me', then that's all good.

But if not, daaaaamn.
 
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