What’s the Deal with Brunch?

Brunch annoys me. I don’t like the word or the concept. It’s completely unnecessary. Breakfast is just fine on its own. Lunch is a perfectly acceptable meal as well. There’s no need to combine them and call it something else. If you enjoy breakfast food during the normal lunch time, fine. Go somewhere that serves breakfast around the clock. (Mmm… Denny’s.)

Restaurants typically serve brunch as a way to jack up prices on weekends. Anyone visiting a favorite Las Vegas buffet on Saturday or Sunday has likely been smacked with weekend brunch pricing $5 to $20 more than what they would pay during the week. Sure they’ll throw in mimosas or bloody marys, but unless you were planning on getting shit-hammered with your meal anyway, that alone doesn’t make brunch much more appealing than breakfast.

So when we arrived for breakfast at Cosmopolitan’s Wicked Spoon buffet (complete review coming soon on the podcast), I wasn’t thrilled to learn they had replaced breakfast and lunch with brunch seven days a week. Because Cosmo is new, it’s not surprising that they’re making adjustments, but the price bumps are Caesars-like.

December 2010 Hours and Pricing
Breakfast: 7 – 11 a.m. ($15)
Lunch: 11 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. ($19)
Dinner: 5 – 10 p.m. ($27)
Saturday and Sunday Brunch: 7 a.m. – 3 p.m. ($23)

May 2011 Hours and Pricing
Monday through Friday Brunch: 8 a.m. – 2 p.m. ($22)
Sunday through Thursday Dinner: Sun-Thur 5 – 9 p.m. ($35)
Friday and Saturday Dinner: 5 – 10 p.m. ($35)
Saturday and Sunday Brunch: 8 a.m. – 3 p.m. ($36 or $29 w/o booze)

Brunch defenders, I invite you to try to change my mind.

10 thoughts on “What’s the Deal with Brunch?

  1. I couldnt agree with you more Tim! I would like to see the Google Translator translate Brunch! It would output, big Ed Hardy Douche tax with a sprinkle of squeezed juices from Encore Beach Club pool, a la mode tax.

  2. Monte Carlo just did the same thing. Here’s the deal: Plenty of people are late risers in Las Vegas. I’d say the vast majority. And yet what do you want after a night of boozing? Breakfast. Pancakes. Omelette made to order. Not roast beef and shrimp.

    No question it is an economic move. They charge more for brunch but people are eating eggs and pancakes (cheap food). But I don’t think you can argue with the demand for it. Especially at Cosmo where their demographic is most likely to be going to bed at sunrise.

  3. Where on the scale between “hammered” and “shit-faced” is shit-hammered? And I agree, give me Denny’s any day. I don’t need to pay $23 for pancakes.

  4. Oh man! I didn’t like their breakfast buffet, but I liked their lunch buffet. This sucks.

  5. how will i go on with my free breakfast buffet deal every day during my November stay? What’s the chance of getting it upgraded to free brunch at an extra $7 each per day? I love breakfast, why did they do it?

  6. I’m with Ted. They raise the cost of lunch by calling it brunch, but lower their actual cost by replacing a significant portion of the higher cost lunch items with lower cost breakfast items. As long as people don’t go somewhere else, they win. Makes Hash House even more appealing for breakfast/brunch.

  7. I’m no grammarian, but something tells me the proper adjectival form would be Caeserian. Please, God, let it be Caeserian.

  8. First meal of the day in Vegas. Bagel and coffee. Booze for dessert. Usually $5 for the coffe and bagel, much better than any brunch in town.

  9. call it what you want…isn’t the true vegas breakfast the same thing you were drinking right before you got up?

    why is it there are no clocks in the casinos but the buffet serves different things at diffierent times?

    hey Jimmy, every been to a turkish prison?

Leave a Reply