Trying to find something to give your Mom for Mother’s Day can be a daunting task. What do you get for the person who raised you and has watched you grow up all along? Memories tend to be a special gift, and one of the most popular ways to make those memories is to bring her to the Great American Brunch.
“Brunch is the fastest-growing full-service segment of dining in the United States. More people are opening brunch concepts than any other type of restaurant right now in the full-service dining hall,” says founder and co-owner of the Black Shoe Hospitality Group, Dan Seidner.Â
They run Blue’s Egg, Story Hill BKC, and Buttermint Fine Dining.
Where did the term “Brunch” come from?
Seidner says, “The one thing I can say with certainty is it’s decidedly an American term. Second thing is that Southerners lay claim to it and New Yorkers lay claim to it.”
It’s the battle of the North versus the South.
“The New Yorkers say that it came out of coming off of big nights of partying and the later meal that was both kind of a start and end to the day. Southerners talk about how it was coming off of fasting and that after church people would do it. There’s also an argument that it had to do with some of the hunting traditions. So there’s lots of different arguments out there,” explains Seidner.
As for the term, according to the Smithsonian, the word “brunch,” the blending of breakfast and lunch, first appeared in print in an 1895 Hunter’s Weekly article by British author Guy Berenger.
He suggested an alternative to the heavy post-church Sunday meals in favor of lighter fare served late in the morning.
The only difference is, it’s not really all that light anymore.
Seidner says it’s the almighty egg that’s front and center in this meal, “Eggs Benedict is our most popular dish. Here at Blue’s, one of the big differentiators for us are our hash browns, which we call Blue’s Browns. Best described as a hash brown sandwich because we browned both sides and then we fill it and brown it some more. We have a shrimp and calamari scramble on our menu. We’ll do high quality steak preparations for breakfast.”
Looking at things by-the-numbers: “We average, I can tell you for the week purchase, we’re not yet back to full steam, but pre-COVID, we were using around 8,000 eggs a week. Right now, I’d probably put it at about 6,000 eggs a week. It’s hundreds, if not thousands of eggs in a day. We produce somewhere between 500 and 700 gallons of coffee a week. For bacon, we brown off probably about 3,000 pieces of bacon a week. On a Sunday here at Blue’s Egg, we typically take care of between 400 and 550 people,” explains Seidner.
So a lot goes into this phenomenon called brunch.
Just something to keep in mind when you take mother dear out for her special meal on Mother’s Day.
TOP HEADLINES FROM THE 620 WTMJ NEWS TEAM:
- Snoop Dogg is performing in Wisconsin this summer
- Brewers 360: Pat Murphy says it is ‘too late’ to save reputation with umpires
- Waukesha Parade Memorial ribbon-cutting to take place on the anniversary of tragedy
- UWM Administration agrees with student protestors to make efforts to divest in funding
- WATCH: Racine County deputies halt speeder accused of stabbing, carjacking Madison Uber driver
READ: Milwaukee Public Museum will have to close before opening their new site
