Brunch was invented in 1895 as a mercy for Saturday-night revellers
A British writer named Guy Beringer coined brunch in an 1895 magazine essay, pitching a relaxed noon meal to replace the heavy post-church Sunday dinner and spare anyone who had been out late on Saturday. New Orleans turned the idea into multi-course feasts, and New York's upper crust adopted it in the 1920s.
Beringer's piece, Brunch: A Plea, appeared in Hunter's Weekly. Instead of England's early Sunday dinner of heavy meat and savoury pies, he proposed starting around midday with tea or coffee, marmalade and other breakfast staples before moving on to more substantial food. He sold it as a meal that made people cheerful, talkative and pleased with themselves and their companions. Punch magazine picked up the word, and the Oxford English Dictionary recorded it in an 1896 supplement.
In the United States the idea took root first in New Orleans in the late 1890s. Elizabeth Begué, a German immigrant, is credited with serving a second breakfast at her restaurant that stretched to six or seven courses over several hours with champagne and chicory coffee; the World's Fair held in the city in 1884 had already brought her place national attention. Brennan's and Antoine's kept the tradition going.
Between 1920 and 1950 brunch became an upper-class ritual in New York. A 1939 New York Times feature noted that the word was mostly used at home, while Manhattan restaurants advertised hunt breakfasts or bracer breakfasts; at the Hotel Lombardy waiters wore red hunting jackets, and the Madison added live music and dancing. American brunch today leans indulgent, with eggs Benedict, chicken and waffles, and cocktails like the Bloody Mary and mimosa.
Other cultures had their own versions long before the English word. Cantonese yum cha offers dumplings and buns from passing carts, and Mandarin simply fuses its words for breakfast and lunch. Italians are experimenting with colanzo, blending their terms for breakfast and lunch, Quebec's language office accepts brunch alongside a French synonym, and Toronto's Leslieville neighbourhood is sometimes crowned the city's brunch capital. In the Philippines brunch runs from 9 am to noon, while a mid-afternoon snack goes by the Spanish-era name merienda.
Source: Brunch
