If breakfast feels like a duty and lunch can seem like an obligation then brunch is the renegade meal of the day, something decadent that exists for no other reason than to occupy a chunk of the morning when in all likelihood one would not be doing anything else. And what could be a more delightful way to pass the time than eating pimped-up breakfast dishes that, because it’s around midday, it is entirely acceptable to wash down with alcohol?
That, at least, was the imported American version of brunch which took off stateside in the Thirties, though the word itself was invented by the British, appearing in Punch magazine in 1895 to describe “a Sunday meal for Saturday night carousers”.
