A Man's Guide to Surviving Brunch

Just because you've eaten breakfast your whole life doesn't mean you're ready for brunch. Here's how to live to eat eggs benedict another day.

Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

So you’ve been invited to brunch. Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us. Sooner or later we're all dragged into the vortex of billowy hats, crepes, and frittatas. You spend your whole life eating breakfast, and suddenly, out of nowhere, you find yourself munching on scones at 1 p.m. There’s nothing you could have done to prevent it. Once you move to a hip neighborhood in a big city, you quickly discover that no one eats breakfast. Besides, who wants to eat large portions of reasonably priced food in the morning when you could have brunch? Brunch is as much a part of modern city life as dog parks and food trucks—ubiquitous and sometimes annoying. The best you can hope to do is survive it by using these key strategic methods. Oh, you’ll still leave the meal emotional drained, overloaded on the pop culture news, and a little drunk, but at least you'll get out alive.

Make No Plans For the Rest of the Day

No matter how early you begin your meal, brunching can last until the sun is beginning to set on your locally sourced meal. There is no way to know when the brunch will end. All that setting an end point for the meal will do is make you angrier when you fly through the allot three hour meal window and into hours four and five. This isn't like watching a football game, going to the movies, or playing paintball. There's no goal, no end point, it's never over. Brunch floats on and on until a bruncher has to walk her dog or the waitress begs you to pay up before the end of her shift. The only guaranteed way to end a brunch is if someone suggests that it might be time to head to the bar and kick off the evening.

Fifteen Minutes Late is a Half Hour Early

To be on time for brunch is to be the last person to arrive. It may seem rude to be intentionally tardy, but once again, this isn't about manners, this is about survival. If you're going to a brunch place worth its artisanal sea salt, there will be a substantial crowd of demanding customers chomping at the gluten-free bit to get in. The host or hostess, of course, will be in a foul mood. Remember, this professionally attractive person is working five times harder than they've ever worked in their life today. They will insist that you can't be seated until your entire party arrives. If your friends agree to meet at noon, that means the first person will probably get there at 12:15 and put your name in, beginning your hour long sidewalk vigil before finally being seated. If you arrive before your party is seated, you won't have caused any problems and you'll have successfully avoided having to listen to your fellow sidewalk-waiting customers complain about how the place used to be cool before all these people started coming there.

Sit Down Last

If you are new to a group of brunchers, there is already a carefully constructed seating situation that you are not welcome to interrupt. Not only is the group arranged by who likes to talk to whom, but there are other considerations. Factors like who likes to share food, who goes to the bathroom or takes phone calls the most, and who has had sex with the same guys in the past are taken into account. Don't disrupt the carefully calibrated social order. Wait until everyone else has sat down and then take your seat.

Invent A Dietary Restriction or Two

Dietary restrictions are like a new hip club, and all you have to do is lie to be a member. Of course, if you actually have gluten or peanut issues, you can use your real-life allergies, but don't be afraid to embellish. Ask for absurd substitutions. Ask if there's any spinach in the vegetarian omelet. Ask if it's possible to get a latte without milk. If you want to be hang with the bad bitches of brunch you have to let the world know that your special orders have nothing to do with your needs and everything to with your wants. And your waiter needs to know that you've got a lot of wants; if he says no substitutions, you substitute his tip for a ... much smaller tip.

Eggs Benedict Are Your Friend

You are going to pay more for brunch than breakfast. This isn't IHOP bro. Your chef is probably not an ex-con and if he is, his crime was likely white collar in nature. He doesn't have a Loony Tunes tattoo unless it's ironic. Not only is the meal expensive, but sometimes it won't be that filling. If you aren't sure if your $20 meal is going to fill you up, go with eggs benedict. It's everything your used to: eggs, biscuits, and some kind of meat, just with some dope sauce on it and a five dollar mark up. If another dish seems appealing, by all means give it a shot, just don't be surprised if you have to stop by the bodega for a bacon, egg, and cheese on your way home to sate your hunger.

Don't Mention A Fellow Bruncher's Walk of Shame Until They Bring It Up

At least one member of every brunch posse is coming from an apartment that is not their own. It's going to come up in conversation at some point; don't worry, you'll get every detail you never wanted. But, it is not your place to bring it up. You have to endure the coy smiles and not-so-veiled references to what she got into last night until finally she says something like, "You think you guys had a good night? Well, let me tell your what I got into." It might be your impulse to speed up the process and get through the boring retelling of how a fellow bruncher got picked up at the bar as quickly as possible, but don't even think about it. It's not going to work. Obligatory brunch conversations unfold in their own time; just order another mimosa and let it happen.

Talk Television and Dating Not Politics and Religion

There are two failsafe conversations to have at brunch. You can never go wrong with "What TV shows are you watching?" or "So are you guys seeing anyone?" These are two conversations that can go on endlessly and make everybody feel good. While no one has seen all the same movies, read the same books, or listens to the same music, everyone watched Game of Thrones last week and can't wait for Orange is the New Black to come back. Asking vaguely about people's love life is great because it allows them to volunteer as much or as little information as they like while providing space to brag about how hot, rich, or interesting the person they're currently banging might be.

Politics and religion are bad topics of conversation, but not for the traditional reasons. At brunches, everyone is a "a democrat and kind of disappointed in Obama" and "not religious but spiritual." The problem isn't that people will disagree, it's that they will agree non-stop. Your fellow brunchers will try to one-up each other with smug lines about their abiding love of diversity, equality, and celebrating all kinds of voices until the restaurant closes. You'll tack at least an hour onto your brunch schedule before the final "I just think it's important to give voice to the voiceless" has been uttered.

No One At Brunch Cares About Sports

At brunch, no one understands sports, no cares about sports, and no one wants to talk about sports. If the brunch goes long and comes perilously close to interfering with your sports watching schedule, you will be stare shamed as you walk out the door, and not just by your party, but by everyone in the restaurant. The important thing is to not get your hopes up. I once attended a birthday brunch at the same time my beloved Steelers had one o'clock game. Lo and behold, the game was on one of the televisions and I could see it clearly from my table. Halfway through the first quarter, the kitchen staff changed the channel to a Mexican soccer game. This taught me an important lesson that I want to pass on to you. I should have taken a seat facing away from the game because I should have known it was too good to be true.

Never Commit to a Second Location

As your cuisine comrades fade into a mimosa induced haze, there will be fanciful, ambitious discussions about how to spend the rest of the day. It will be suggested that everyone goes to a botanical garden or an art show or a wine tasting. Don't do it. Most of the time, you'll end up hanging around only to have the second event cancelled when everyone realizes how drunk "tired" they are anyway. If the event does happen, you need to avoid it like the plague. There is no group quite as cranky as a bunch of day-drunk carb-bloated people trying to experience culture. Claim you have "some stuff to take care of" as the brunch winds down, even though all you really have to take care of is a two hour nap and a DVRed episode of Around the Horn.

Accept That You Will Leave Drunk

Bottomless mimosa means bottomless mimosa. Don't cheat yourself. It's not fair to you and it's not fair to everyone else. If you go to brunch intending to cut yourself off, you'll still drink three mimosas before you realize what you're doing, and your early afternoon buzz will turn into early evening drowsy anyway. In agreeing to come out for brunch, you've told the world that you won't be doing anything productive for the rest of the day, and that anything you attempt to do will be done with a Surgeon General's warning. You won't be operating a motor vehicle. You won't be working on your taxes. You aren't repainting the den. Treat this like a football Sunday. The most intense activity you're getting into the rest of the day will be dialing the number to order a pizza and wings from Papa Johns after your wake up from that nap. Trust us, you'll want to be drunk if you're going to endure three hours of bohemian chatter anyway, so you might as well go in full steam ahead.