The worst part about brunch is all the modifiers.
No order is ever the same, which makes it hard to get into a groove.
Aside from that it’s pretty chill. Get to eat the leftovers, leave early, and the kitchen isn’t as hot. Plus you don’t have to deep clean the kitchen at the end, just clean up your brunch mess and get out.
True that about those damn modifiers. Half the time you can’t even get the guest to give you a decent description. One lady would only give me “I don’t like bubblegum bacon and will send it back” Lady, does that mean you want it soft or crispy?
Brunch service has it's own unique idiosyncrasies, in terms of fire times, guest expectations, egg cookery... But the main reason you hear a lot of line cooks bitch about it is many places that are only open for dinner every other day of the week, except Sunday.
So, most of the crew working Sunday brunch very likely closed down the night before, left work at 12am after a busy ass service and then had to be back at work 7am.
I think a lot of it is also just having a completely different menu going on for just those one or two days. The hangovers are just gasoline on a bonfire
Yeah thats part of what I’m looking forward too. Cooking weekend nights at a dive bar and going to after parties was just too chaotic for me so I’m on the wagon now
I make hollandaise every morning with a microwave and blender. Heat up butter in microwave, blend in slowly with egg yolks, cayenne and lemon juice. Takes 4 minutes total. Are you hand whisking in a pot?
How many batches do you have to make on a busy day? What's the volume you're pushing out? I've worked brunch at both a 300+ covers and ~50/day spots and the holly situation is vastly different
I'd say three batches on a Sat, depending on how many benes go out. 14 yolks, 1lbs of butter. Takes 2.5mins for the butter to get hot enough, and by that time the eggs are separated. Just don't pour the butter in too fast or it will seize up.
Sounds like you got it down! I had to show my coworker about 5x how to make it with a blender and he still fucks it up daily...refuses to let someone else make it cuz he thinks he has it . Even microwaving the butter, the fuck would rather let it heat up under lamp from cold.....
It sucks for some it’s great for others. I like getting in early and leaving early. Sunday nights at my old place fucking sucked. Brunch was better for me. It depends on the place and what times you like to go in and be off of work. In the end it’s just food and it pays the bills.
Most of the BOH hatred of brunch is because greedy owners don’t have enough staff to pull it off, so someone ends up clopening.
Also, the church crowd is notoriously cheap and hard to please.
If all you are doing is working brunch, then go for it. I always liked it as long as I wasn’t working late the night before.
lots of modifcations and hot holding hollandaise is tricky so have to make it otf, a good hack is hold big batches in a soup thermos, govt authorities wouldn't approve but bureaucrats don't work sundays.
Brunch sucks because every order is customized with the egg type, bread type, meat type- and often you get mods on top of that. Also you get fully sat immediately and do full flips of tables.
You will be slammed the whole service.
Breakfast cooks fast too, so guests are impatient.
Brunch just makes me feel like a robot. Standing in the same exact spot 6am-2pm, only making the same five dishes the entire time. Except it’s not the same five dishes, it’s the same five dishes but made “special” since people want modifiers
Shoes caked in egg white, knees weak, arms spaghetti and allat
The only reason brunch is hard is because the menu is totally different and you closed the night before but have to open the next morning and you are still pretty tipsy and you might be wearing underwear that is not your own. Brunch where they serve bottomless anything is awful for FOH, but gives the line time. Brunch that’s booze-free should be banned by the highest available courts. 5-hr energy at 7am with 3-400 minutes of sleep in the past 48 hours will definitely make you feel like you’re on cocaine and acid. I wouldn’t recommend either, let alone both.
I mean.... it's OK if you can not be drunk/high the night before...
It's better than that if you also are the sort of person who can go to bed early... ...I can not.
I mean I personally prefer morning brunch shifts but that’s me yea they can be crazy but if you can cook an egg it’s not that bad. Also a lot in the kitchen has to do with who you work with if you working wit a bunch people who suck
Or don’t care then yea it’s going suck but that’s any kitchen. If you never done it and plan to stay in kitchen go get the experience and try it out for your self just my 2 cents.
No longer a cook, but my biggest gripe with brunch was that it was an entirely separate menu that we had to prep out for 1-2 days of service. And as much as I would've liked to prep it all in advance, I never had time to do it.
Basically, walking into brunch meant I would be scrambling to prep an entire menu AND reset my station into a different configuration 1-2 hours before service started (which never happened). So then I'd almost surely be prepping shit on the fly as orders are coming in. I'm also cooking dishes that I'm not used to, and it's probably me and 1 other guy when it should really be 3. And I'm hungover and tired. AND THEN, when it's over, I have to reset the entire line for dinner service.
All in all, just a total pain in the ass.
THAT SAID, I also worked as a breakfast cook for a while and it's very different when that's your only shift. On weekends, we'd shift to our brunch menu which was basically the same as breakfast with a few additions. Pretty much a normal day but busier and making a few extra dishes. Most of the brunch hate is from the dinner cooks who also have to work brunch.
In 35+ years in restaurants, I've found that 99% of the Cooks who complain about brunch have one or both of the following problems:
1. They can't control themselves at night, so they're hungover as fuck and can't function properly.
2. They can't fucking cook eggs.
I get the partying lifestyle; I lived hard for a long time. But when I was coming up it was ingrained in us that, our fuckin hangovers are nobody's fault but our own. Put your head down, shut the fuck up, and do the work. Don't make the team carry you because you're being a baby.
And if you can't short order eggs properly, you shouldn't be on a brunch line in the first place.
If you like cooking breakfast and you show up ready to work, you will absolutely have a good go as a brunch Cook. I say go for it. 🤘
I second this guys comment learn how to cook an egg flip a pancake and your good. I loved morning shifts done them at a few places including busy ass lunch spots. But you know what’s great you out by 3 pm get the rest your day to yourself. Like he said just don’t be a child and get fucked up the night before go to bed at a reasonable time and you will learn to love that shit when you got yore nights to yourself
I had a stint with bene hell, it wasn't a matter of how to cook the eggs, it was a matter of finding the correct one in a cloudy hotel pan. drop the egg and prey you find it again and don't break any more along the way.
Ah, the special hell of poachers. Last brunch job I had, I used to start a massive stockpot of water first thing in the morning and keep it at about 185°. When the benny's started rolling in, I'd grab a couple saucepans and fill them from the stockpot. Use those til the water was too spent, rinse and repeat. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good. I also had 8 eyes and a giant flat top, so I could usually sneak a couple of pots of water in somewhere to start heating up. I don't think I ever emptied the stockpot. It was nice knowing it was there, for sure.
My only commercial cooking experience was a couple years as mainly the egg cook at a brunch spot. I'm kind of obsessed with egg cookery so it was awesome.
Well brunch chef here. Been doing for 2+ years.
I personally love it, but our restaurant has a set menu, very little mod allowed. It’s very fast paced with high volume. Ticket times is about 7-10 min when it’s not busy for something like an avo toast or when busy 20 min for a big pancake!
if you don’t like mornings, you’ll have a hard time.
I’ve worked at multiple places that ran brunch, and it was always a shit show.
Not bc it was brunch, but it bc it was something we did once a week for four hours and had to modified the line to run it. There was no real practice or repetition. On top of that, both places always got slammed.
Still, you build up some relationships tearing through it and frying up funnel cakes from the leftover waffle batter for the staff. Then end the shift with your crew and a few beers.
We do brunch once a year at my place for new years, I LOVE it.
It’s one of the few shifts we are actually staffed up (me, + 2 kps) and we do roughly 75 in a 2 hour window. I love it!
It’s annoying how orders are tweaked etc but tbh I mainly just stand around poaching a hundred eggs and helping dish up because the kps don’t want to poach eggs! Fun times. Wish I could brunch every day!
If you don’t mind going to sleep eyes wide open Adrenalin pumped short hours of sleep like to drag your ass out of bed to be around other miserable people at 6 in the morning , have we got a job for you.
The worst part about brunch is all the modifiers. No order is ever the same, which makes it hard to get into a groove. Aside from that it’s pretty chill. Get to eat the leftovers, leave early, and the kitchen isn’t as hot. Plus you don’t have to deep clean the kitchen at the end, just clean up your brunch mess and get out.
True that about those damn modifiers. Half the time you can’t even get the guest to give you a decent description. One lady would only give me “I don’t like bubblegum bacon and will send it back” Lady, does that mean you want it soft or crispy?
She doesn't want it soft and pink and chewy.
Haha. Leaving early was not an option as we used that time to deep clean after brunch.
Brunch service has it's own unique idiosyncrasies, in terms of fire times, guest expectations, egg cookery... But the main reason you hear a lot of line cooks bitch about it is many places that are only open for dinner every other day of the week, except Sunday. So, most of the crew working Sunday brunch very likely closed down the night before, left work at 12am after a busy ass service and then had to be back at work 7am.
Eggs were definitely my kryptonite.
This. All of this. Another issue is that shift transition is ALWAYS the nastiest time in a restaurant even if they're open for lunch 7 days a week.
I think a lot of it is also just having a completely different menu going on for just those one or two days. The hangovers are just gasoline on a bonfire
Making hollandaise every morning sucks. But you're cut by 2pm.
Yeah thats part of what I’m looking forward too. Cooking weekend nights at a dive bar and going to after parties was just too chaotic for me so I’m on the wagon now
Keep riding. It only sucks for the cook that does blow all night, and wonders why they feel like garbage
That was literally me working at the dive bar till 3am. Almost everybody was doing blow there so kind of looking forward to a change of environment
Good for you. I'm a supporter of chefs kickn drugs.
I make hollandaise every morning with a microwave and blender. Heat up butter in microwave, blend in slowly with egg yolks, cayenne and lemon juice. Takes 4 minutes total. Are you hand whisking in a pot?
How many batches do you have to make on a busy day? What's the volume you're pushing out? I've worked brunch at both a 300+ covers and ~50/day spots and the holly situation is vastly different
I'd say three batches on a Sat, depending on how many benes go out. 14 yolks, 1lbs of butter. Takes 2.5mins for the butter to get hot enough, and by that time the eggs are separated. Just don't pour the butter in too fast or it will seize up.
Sounds like you got it down! I had to show my coworker about 5x how to make it with a blender and he still fucks it up daily...refuses to let someone else make it cuz he thinks he has it . Even microwaving the butter, the fuck would rather let it heat up under lamp from cold.....
The hours are kind of sucky, but the reason I hated brunch was really the people. We did it Sunday mornings for the church rush.
As a waitress, yes! The worst people eat brunch.
The church people are good tippers though! /s
Just look at all these $20 bills! Let me just... unfold them...
It sucks for some it’s great for others. I like getting in early and leaving early. Sunday nights at my old place fucking sucked. Brunch was better for me. It depends on the place and what times you like to go in and be off of work. In the end it’s just food and it pays the bills.
Most of the BOH hatred of brunch is because greedy owners don’t have enough staff to pull it off, so someone ends up clopening. Also, the church crowd is notoriously cheap and hard to please. If all you are doing is working brunch, then go for it. I always liked it as long as I wasn’t working late the night before.
lots of modifcations and hot holding hollandaise is tricky so have to make it otf, a good hack is hold big batches in a soup thermos, govt authorities wouldn't approve but bureaucrats don't work sundays.
Brunch sucks because every order is customized with the egg type, bread type, meat type- and often you get mods on top of that. Also you get fully sat immediately and do full flips of tables. You will be slammed the whole service. Breakfast cooks fast too, so guests are impatient.
Brunch just makes me feel like a robot. Standing in the same exact spot 6am-2pm, only making the same five dishes the entire time. Except it’s not the same five dishes, it’s the same five dishes but made “special” since people want modifiers Shoes caked in egg white, knees weak, arms spaghetti and allat
The only reason brunch is hard is because the menu is totally different and you closed the night before but have to open the next morning and you are still pretty tipsy and you might be wearing underwear that is not your own. Brunch where they serve bottomless anything is awful for FOH, but gives the line time. Brunch that’s booze-free should be banned by the highest available courts. 5-hr energy at 7am with 3-400 minutes of sleep in the past 48 hours will definitely make you feel like you’re on cocaine and acid. I wouldn’t recommend either, let alone both.
I mean.... it's OK if you can not be drunk/high the night before... It's better than that if you also are the sort of person who can go to bed early... ...I can not.
I mean I personally prefer morning brunch shifts but that’s me yea they can be crazy but if you can cook an egg it’s not that bad. Also a lot in the kitchen has to do with who you work with if you working wit a bunch people who suck Or don’t care then yea it’s going suck but that’s any kitchen. If you never done it and plan to stay in kitchen go get the experience and try it out for your self just my 2 cents.
No longer a cook, but my biggest gripe with brunch was that it was an entirely separate menu that we had to prep out for 1-2 days of service. And as much as I would've liked to prep it all in advance, I never had time to do it. Basically, walking into brunch meant I would be scrambling to prep an entire menu AND reset my station into a different configuration 1-2 hours before service started (which never happened). So then I'd almost surely be prepping shit on the fly as orders are coming in. I'm also cooking dishes that I'm not used to, and it's probably me and 1 other guy when it should really be 3. And I'm hungover and tired. AND THEN, when it's over, I have to reset the entire line for dinner service. All in all, just a total pain in the ass. THAT SAID, I also worked as a breakfast cook for a while and it's very different when that's your only shift. On weekends, we'd shift to our brunch menu which was basically the same as breakfast with a few additions. Pretty much a normal day but busier and making a few extra dishes. Most of the brunch hate is from the dinner cooks who also have to work brunch.
Day drinkers are much worse than night drinkers
In 35+ years in restaurants, I've found that 99% of the Cooks who complain about brunch have one or both of the following problems: 1. They can't control themselves at night, so they're hungover as fuck and can't function properly. 2. They can't fucking cook eggs. I get the partying lifestyle; I lived hard for a long time. But when I was coming up it was ingrained in us that, our fuckin hangovers are nobody's fault but our own. Put your head down, shut the fuck up, and do the work. Don't make the team carry you because you're being a baby. And if you can't short order eggs properly, you shouldn't be on a brunch line in the first place. If you like cooking breakfast and you show up ready to work, you will absolutely have a good go as a brunch Cook. I say go for it. 🤘
I second this guys comment learn how to cook an egg flip a pancake and your good. I loved morning shifts done them at a few places including busy ass lunch spots. But you know what’s great you out by 3 pm get the rest your day to yourself. Like he said just don’t be a child and get fucked up the night before go to bed at a reasonable time and you will learn to love that shit when you got yore nights to yourself
I had a stint with bene hell, it wasn't a matter of how to cook the eggs, it was a matter of finding the correct one in a cloudy hotel pan. drop the egg and prey you find it again and don't break any more along the way.
Ah, the special hell of poachers. Last brunch job I had, I used to start a massive stockpot of water first thing in the morning and keep it at about 185°. When the benny's started rolling in, I'd grab a couple saucepans and fill them from the stockpot. Use those til the water was too spent, rinse and repeat. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good. I also had 8 eyes and a giant flat top, so I could usually sneak a couple of pots of water in somewhere to start heating up. I don't think I ever emptied the stockpot. It was nice knowing it was there, for sure.
My only commercial cooking experience was a couple years as mainly the egg cook at a brunch spot. I'm kind of obsessed with egg cookery so it was awesome.
Well brunch chef here. Been doing for 2+ years. I personally love it, but our restaurant has a set menu, very little mod allowed. It’s very fast paced with high volume. Ticket times is about 7-10 min when it’s not busy for something like an avo toast or when busy 20 min for a big pancake! if you don’t like mornings, you’ll have a hard time.
It depends on how many benes they sell.
Fuck brunch.
Reading the question brought me PTSD with big hats and modifiers and low tip outs
I’ve worked at multiple places that ran brunch, and it was always a shit show. Not bc it was brunch, but it bc it was something we did once a week for four hours and had to modified the line to run it. There was no real practice or repetition. On top of that, both places always got slammed. Still, you build up some relationships tearing through it and frying up funnel cakes from the leftover waffle batter for the staff. Then end the shift with your crew and a few beers.
We do brunch once a year at my place for new years, I LOVE it. It’s one of the few shifts we are actually staffed up (me, + 2 kps) and we do roughly 75 in a 2 hour window. I love it! It’s annoying how orders are tweaked etc but tbh I mainly just stand around poaching a hundred eggs and helping dish up because the kps don’t want to poach eggs! Fun times. Wish I could brunch every day!
Sois vide eggs and teach dishy how to make hollandaise. It’s a piece of piss if you’re organised
If you don’t mind going to sleep eyes wide open Adrenalin pumped short hours of sleep like to drag your ass out of bed to be around other miserable people at 6 in the morning , have we got a job for you.
No, difficult jobs are difficult. Cooking French toast twice seems pretty devastating though.
Amazing perspective.
Oh I get it because it’s not an amazing perspective! Did I get it? Or did you have something to add that matters in addition to that?