Easy Like Sunday Morning
My friend Jeff insists — straight-faced, as it were — that gay men invented the Sunday brunch in the 1970s so that “friends could gather over a late, late breakfast, hungover from the night before, to compare notes on who they had picked up at the bar.”
Sorry, Jeff, but the late, great journalist H.L. Mencken had long since reported that “brunch, designating a combination of breakfast and lunch, eaten around noon, appeared in England in 1900.” (Of course, Mencken didn’t say who was eating it.)
In Kansas City, Sunday brunches come and go, often depending on the economic climate. Expensive brunches, like the pricy but elaborate one offered by the old Ritz-Carlton Hotel, are hard to find during these penny-pinching times. When the Ritz became the Fairmont (401 Ward Parkway), the new owners nixed the flashy brunch, though the hotel now offers a $19 Sunday breakfast buffet (which includes coffee, juice or a Bloody Mary or mimosa) in the Oak Room from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Besides an omelet station, there are scrambled eggs, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, bacon and sausages, cinnamon-raisin French toast and poppyseed waffles.
Meanwhile, Bob Gaines, owner of the Colony Steak House & Lobster Pot Restaurant (8821 State Line), last week opened the restaurant’s first-ever nonholiday Sunday brunch. Gaines says the move was “a way of building a new revenue source.” He hopes that the lack of brunch competition in his neighborhood — and all those nearby churches — will add up to customers for his $13.95 deal, which also includes made-to-order omelets and waffles, fried popcorn shrimp, shrimp-and-scallop Alfredo, smoked salmon and chocolate mousse. The Colony’s brunch runs from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
And the Coyote Grill (4843 Johnson Drive in the Mission Center mall in Mission) puts a Mexican spin on its 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday brunch, with a make-your-own-fajitas bar, guacamole and chips, and egg-and-cheese “chimichomelletes” in addition to the typical breakfast fare. It’s also priced at $13.95. The Coyote Grill’s more upscale sister restaurant on the Plaza, Grand Street Café ( 4740 Grand) has been doing a snazzy order-from-the-menu brunch for some time but recently added an “appetizer bar” with the brunch items, featuring shrimp, hummus, salads, and fresh vegetables.
You supply the hangover notes.
