Louise here. I must admit, I had to think sbout it, mostly because I have never had set times to eat and what to have. That said, Eggs benedict would be my choice. for brunch, either with ham or smoked salmon.

me too! I do love a good Eggs Benedict... with ham.

I never really understood "Brunch". I love breakfast and can eat that food any time of the day. On my way home from LA I stopped at the Black Bear Diner and had pancakes, sausage and eggs... at 4 pm. (Their pancakes are especially good. Well... then there are their waffles.... 🤔 ) 😄

Nothing wrong with ”breakfast for dinner”, or breakfast at brunchtime if that's what you want, but it's not typically ”brunch” food. :) Whereas eggs benedict is classic brunch. :)

Eggs Benedict, but they never put enough lemon juice in the Hollandaise.

Or, corned beef hash (with GOOD corned beef, please) and poached eggs.

We're retired, thankfully, so we eat at 11:30a and 6:30p most days. We eat either breakfast foods or lunch foods for our first meal, depending on what I feel like making.

I believe it is only tradition or custom that we tend to eat certain foods at certain times of day. Personally, I don't find that to be a restricting factor :-) Whatever appeals at whatever time I decide I am hungry is the way I roll :-) Would I grill a salmon or roast a prime rib for brunch? No but I'd certainly indulge if someone else did!!

My favorite brunch (when I eat out ) is Cobb Salad. I never order anything with poached eggs, as I do not like runny yolks and prefer hard boiled eggs, as in the Cobb Salad. I also do not like Hollandaise sauce - it has an ick factor for me, but I think if it had enough cayenne on it, I could stomach it.

When I make brunch, it is more often migas, breakfast burritos, grits casserole (with herbs, sausage, peppers, garlic, egg, and cheese) quiche, fried rice, crêpes, frittata (often with potato), German apple pancakes, an omelet, or maybe latkes.

I cook breakfast so often than I never want breakfast for dinner - I don't really like breakfast food that much but cook it because I need a quick protein meal in the morning. I don't really like eggs and have to add a lot of ingredients to them to make them palatable for me.

An "ick" factor with Hollandaise.......that's a new one on me :-) Personally, I think a good Hollandaise would make even flip flops palatable!!

^Remember the story of Jack Sprat - that's sort of how I feel about Hollandaise.

Eggs Benedict. Frittata, strata, quiche, savory pies and savory tarts. Open faced baked cheese, tomato, and bacon sandwiches. Burritos stuffed with beans, rice and cheese or sausage gravy and eggs, quesilidillas stuffed with spinach and cheese. Brazilian cheese bread with corn sauce and a side of sausages, cheesy grits with shrimp and ham with red eye gravy. Savory dutch babies and soccas. Beef bone broth and brown bread with a creamy walnut smear with sliced pears. A chartuterie board or cheese and fruit board- nice with some bread. A raclette of cheese and potatoes with toast points. Pasta, chicken, or fish salads in lettuce cups, formed or molded salads, mixed fruits, chilled soups. Cucumber shooters. Plum tomatoes stuffed with parmesan risotto, mini sweet peppers stuffed with cream duxelles.. egg crepe and mushroom sushi rolls, chicken congee with poached eggs, dim sum, tapas.. bloody marys, turkish eggs, cheese tamales with lots of guac, perogies and fried eggs, fried black bread and fried potato loaf with bacon dressing. Potato pancakes and sausage dumplings.

Every time I go out for brunch,I end up ordering something breakfasty. I like breakfast though. Sometimes I will get something like a monti Cristo. I wouldn't make that myself.

I dont remember the last time I went out for brunch though. I dont keep normal hours or eating habits so anything goes anytime for me. Pizza at 6 am, pancakes at 7 pm, takis and cheese at midnight. Whatever.

Given that Lars doesn't like runny egg yolks, I get the dislike of Hollandaise. I mean, it's all that fatty runny yolk goodness plus a ladleful of the high viscosity of butter. I don't think Hollandaise is at its best right off a spoon--likes being a thin coating on something that'll join it in flavor--but it's mighty fine. I refuse to make it. So I don't have to eat it. And I don't have to wear it on my behind. :)

All the things Lars listed as what he makes for brunch fit my own definition of "brunch food". Late breakfast, morning tea, Sunday breakfast, first meal of the day when the sun is high, etc., are not "brunch" to me. Brunch is a purposeful, particular meal that involves plans, even if it's just the family. It's a special occasion, eating at a different time than normal, late for breakfast (later than Sunday breakfast), early for lunch, eaten with people with whom the conviviality is part of the occasion, and somewhat fancified. It's not a bowl of cereal or pancakes as the center of attention.

Looking back at mealtimes observed, more or less, breakfast was at 7:00 a.m., cereal or toast, eggs or yoghurt. Sunday breakfast aka pancake breakfast was at 9:00 a.m. and was pancakes or waffles (or potentially French toast) with butter and maple syrup or jam, bacon or sausage, maybe eggs. Brunch was at 11:00 a.m., and had a fancy main dish, fresh fruit, both sweet and savory, something more interesting than OJ, and company. Alternatively, there's the Jewish, after Sunday School, version of brunch with bagels (always savory! Sweet bagels are weird!), cream cheese, lox, smoked trout or whitefish or schmaltz herring, hard boiled eggs, onion slices, tomato slices, other veg fixings, capers, etc. A typical part of brunch is a lot of color, a lot of produce. So one could include oatmeal or pancakes, as preferred things to eat, but they're too much like ordinary breakfast to call specifically brunch food.

I want something that takes a little fussing, whether it's eggs Benedict /Florentine, crepes, omelette, huevos rancheros /shakshuka/migas, or something along that line, along with everything Lars said...and Beesneeds. It doesn't have to be eggs. I wouldn't choose crab cakes, but that's a respectable brunch food. I've seen brunch dim sum, which was different, but which worked. I can't remember the details, but it was brunchy. Croquettes would be fine. But with color!

It's interesting how many went straight to eggs benedict. :) I agree! It's the quintessential brunch food.

Back when I travelled a lot for work, there was one hotel at a trade show where the coffee shop breakfast was tollerable, but had limited choices. I ended up always getting the eggs benedict at 7 am. I'm more a petit dejeuner kind of person at that hour, especially jet lagged and feeling more 5 am-ish, but I knew there would be a lot of hiking and not much in the way of lunch, so chose the most calorie dense, volume small, stick to your ribs (i.e., plenty of protein and fat) thing they had. Eggs benedict at that hour isn't particularly appealing or yummy, and it wasn't brunched up. Just on a sparse plate, with maybe a twisted orange slice for garnish. Eggs B deserves better!

Amylou, monte christo seems like a perfect brunch idea! Especially if the weather is inclement, I tend to think of brunch as a sunny day, outdoor kind of thing, but, of course, it can be any day. I can't eat them, however. besides the obvious, they seem to, for me, require a lot of jam for the ne plus ultra of deliciousness. So it's like three days’ food of mostly wrong choices for me. I'll take the frittata and fresh fruit and look wistfully at the monte christo and jam... :)

When I have brunch with a group of ladies, breakfast casseroles and fruit seem to be the go to items.

Brunch isn’t breakfast and it isn’t lunch, and it isn’t just some meal that you absent-mindedly sit down to between breakfast and lunch.

Brunch is a bit special, often a weekend thing, a little treat, often something of a rerecurrent social occasion.

You eat it at a restaurant, unless you’ve invited friends over, in which case they are they ones at your restaurant, or unless you, ravishing in your Givency dress and arm-length gloves, are making a croissant at Tiffany’s look like a full spread at the Ritz.

So it is something you don’t routinely make for yourself, neither for breakfast nor for lunch, not that you couldn’t, but it’s nice to have someone else make something just a little complicated and special on your treat morning. Again, if you’re hosting friends for brunch chez vous, then turn this around to them, and if you’re wearing arm-length gloves on Fifth Avenue, then ma’am you may, and will, do whatever you like.

Finally, it often converges on one or two dishes that becomes your favorite brunch choice, either from social habit or so as to be always able to find it on a new restaurant’s brunch menu.

I believe this leads us neatly to Eggs Benedict, which we can be confident of finding at almost any brunch spot, is picky enough with the poaching and hollandaise to be happily prepared by others, and goes so nicely with a mimosa, or a Negroni, or a Campari and orange juice.

It happens to lead me, sometimes, to my second favorite brunch, corn beef pastrami, a potato knish, and a plate of chopped liver at Saul’s Deli in Berkeley. This is too low-brow for Holly but I like to think that Paul might partake.

John, that's downright poetic.

Impossible to be anything but, about brunch!

John, well said... Many years ago My husband and i would spend a summer week in Vail ands tay at a hotelr enown for it's brunch. Weekends people came from miles and miles, but we stayed there and got to have it daily. It was mostly buffet and consisted of fruit and pastries and things like eggs to order and crepes, french toast and waffles and on to an assortment of meats and cheeses, not only bacon and sausage but salami and other wursts....and all sorts of cheeses. It all worked! All was not on the buffet t the same time, the waffles ande ggs to order came and went....but most else was always there.

I hosted a brunch last weekend, and I struggled with the menu. I knew blueberry cottage cheese pancakes were going to be on the menu, with bacon because I had some I needed to use up. But what else. I am dieting and also on a gut-friendly diet so didn't want to go too meaty or too sweet or too starchy. I ended up making home made three bean salad with fresh green beans and home grown zucchini chopped, topped with hard boiled egg. I started with that. Then served the pancakes and bacon with roasted orange root vegetables and squash. I was the only one who ate the vegetables . . .

I was going to make a fruit salad but it was going to take some work and I figured as many folks would eat that as the roasted veggies so I didn't bother. That would have been nice served with some yogurt but we really didn't have any, and again, I knew not many would eat it. I thought about fancy scrambled eggs but once I honed in on the three bean salad topped with hard boiled eggs that was it for eggs. I make something called "Dream eggs" with cream cheese or neufchatel bits in it and minced chives and herbs which might have been nice if the pancakes hadn't had cottage cheese in them. Blintzes are a Jewish brunch classic but I actually like cottage cheese pancakes better. Orange juice would have been nice but I didn't have room in the fridge for that so I just served ice water and iced tea and coffee for the coffee drinkers. I had teeccino and dad did not want a hot beverage. No alcohol unfortunately. Next time I see some sparkling fruit juice I am going to buy some just in case I want to do another brunch. I can't hardly drink anything and half the guests couldn't either, fruit juices are pretty much off limits to me due to calorie content vs satiation factor. I'm down 24 lbs so I think my life is pretty much permanently austere.

I love going to brunches, but now days I would only be able to pick just a very few items and small portions at that. I love a brunch buffet but mine was just a small sit down and I had just the right amount of food given the guests. Last time I had a dinner buffet I had a ton of food left over, I am surprised how little food my crowd seems to eat . . . Particularly these days with the deserts.

John do you ever go to Dim Sum? I went to a fabulous one once in Chinatown in NY, but have never been able to find a nice one outside of that. Hubs and I went once to the one restaurant in the Lehigh Valley that claimed to do dim sum and it was HORRIBLE. I was raving about dim sum to hubs and he now mocks me whenever I even bring it up. It was like a bad joke, some of the stuff looked like it came from the garbage disposal . . .

I usually have to make my own ethnic foods if I want something like that. I am experimenting with dumplings now. Those carts of treasures that they brought around for the dim sum in Chinatown were so awesome but I have never seen it done like that anywhere else. We also got a tureen of velvet corn soup for our table. I have never had another serving of it as good. I think a lot of Chinese restaurants like everywhere else just buy premade stuff from the food supplier. This place in Chinatown was packed and I can imagine why, it was all authentic and home made stuff. In fact, everyone there was Chinese except us and no one spoke English or at least wanted to attempt it. Of course this was about 45 years ago . . . Who knows if it even exists anymore . . .

I often entertain at brunch. As a cookbook I once had said, no one expects much out of you at 10 a.m.

On New Year’s Day several years ago, I invited everyone in the neighborhood for brunch. The invitation said ”come anytime between 10 and 2.” I was hoping they would naturally spead themselves out over the 4 hours. Nope. They all showed up at about the same time. The menu was my standard brunch casserole: Pillsbury crescent roll base topped with cooked sausage, eggs, and cheese. Run into the oven for 15-20 minutes. Cheese grits. Bloody Marys, Mimosas, Screwdrivers, and Bloody Caesars (Clamato juice base). Rugelach and Sausage Kolache from a local bakery along with some other sweet pastries. Fruit tray. Thank goodness my sweet cleaning lady was there to help out. We were running brunch casseroles in and out of the oven like we knew what we were doing!

In an effort to work ahead, I once prepared Pioneer Woman’s Egg Muffin Melts (chopped, hard-boiled eggs, grated cheddar cheese, chopped cooked bacon bound with mayo and Worchestershire spread on a toasted english muffin and run under the broiler). It was pretty much a fail. I think one of my guests said something about warm egg salad.

I’ve also served quail at brunch. Instead of the Southern classic of fried quail with gravy, I bake the quail in Madiera and beef broth and then serve it over gruyere grits.

Another favorite of mine for brunch is eggs baked in tomato shells. One small/medium egg is just right for a hollowed out Campari tomato. It is served with a sauce of lemon, sour cream, and horseradish. The original recipe called for a curry sauce but that sauce had an extremely unappetizing eye appeal. Generally, I serve the tomato cups with bacon but once I prepared it for some foreign visitors and also served chicken biscuits.

During football season, my house turns into a revolving door. It is like having a lake house. Everyone you have ever known is trying to cadge an invitation. If my DBIL is here with his golf buddies and they are trying to squeeze in a round of golf before the game, I send them off to the course with sausage balls, donuts holes, and Bloody Marys - all foods that can be eaten at room temp out of Solo cups with toothpicks.

Sometimes, we have Sweet Potato Hash adapted from a recipe at The Kitchn https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-sweet-potato-hash-with-sausage-and-eggs-breakfast-recipes-from-the-kitchn-162997. My adaptation uses bacon instead of sausage, only because the first time I made it, I had bacon but not sausage.

It is rare that I have brunch without serving Gruyere Grits (grits cooked in milk with butter; once cooked add a healthy amount of grated gruyere, salt, pepper. Top with grated Parm and run in the oven for 30 min), although I have served a hash brown casserole just to break up the routine.

Generally, there is fresh fruit or if the fruit didn’t look good, I might make a hot fruit compote. Sometimes the drinks offered include Bellinis, sometimes Milk Punch, but always Bloody Marys and Mimosas.

If I can work it in, I also prepare Millionaire’s Bacon. I first had it at a little breakfast joint in Sausalito, Fred’s Place, in the early 2000s. Thick sliced bacon baked with brown sugar, black pepper, and cayenne.

As you can see, I agree that 10 a.m. is a good time to entertain!