Brendan Francis Newnam - Brunch is hell: how to save the world by throwing a dinner party

A specter is haunting America: the specter of brunch.

Brunch, the dissolute Minotaur: half breakfast, half lunch.

Brunch, singing siren songs of bacon, alcohol, and attractive-yet-aloof waitstaff.

BRUNCH!!! scream chalkboards propped up outside every restaurant and caf, in every city in the Western world, every weekend morning.

What? You dont plan to brunch this Sunday morn-fternoon? Not to worry: your social media feeds will be rich with evidence of the rest of the world brunch-brunch-brunching away in your absence.

Behold! Photo after photo on social media of your smiling friends, lounging on sun-dappled restaurant patios, holding aloft plates heaped with smoked salmon tartines, savory waffles, and scramblesalways the scrambles.

How charming brunch seems!

What hell it actually is!

But you already know that. You are at this very moment holding a book called Brunch Is Hell. Youve spent a full minute of your all-too-brief life reading these words. On some deep, instinctive level, you sense the malignancy of brunch. Perhaps you just came from brunch. Or perhaps youre in a bookstore, scanning these words through a post-brunch mimosa fog, your wallet lightened by eighteen bucks wasted on two eggs and a piece of toast. Your belly is full, yet you feel empty. Spiritually empty. Like, Dads-promise-to-play-catch-with-you empty.

You know something is deeply wrong with brunch. Something you cant quite put your syrup-encrusted finger on.

Take heart. Youre not crazy. Were about to explain the sick truth at the heart of this hybrid-meal menace. And were going to prescribe the perfect antidote. Its called a dinner party.

TEN YEARS AGO , we launched a podcast called The Dinner Party Download, which only tangentially had anything to do with dinner parties. At first, all we wanted to create was an excuse to talk to the coolest artists in the world about anything we wanted, and to get booze and food for free. The Brendan and Rico Talk to Awesome People and Drink and Eat for Free Show seemed like a cumbersome title, though.

Then we realized that everything we wanted to cover in our little arts-and-leisure podcast was the sort of thing one might discuss at a dinner party: the latest and most interesting movies, TV, books, comedy, news, cocktails, and food. Plus, the concept of a dinner party provided us with a handy structure: each segment in the show would correspond to a phase of a dinner party! Great idea! The Dinner Party Download was born.

We didnt expect this organizing concept to define our careers. But over time, listeners (and publications from the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune to Marie Claire) came to us for the secrets to throwing great dinner parties. How to coax, from their own guests, the kind of thoughtful and/or witty conversations they heard on the show. What food to serve. How to mix drinks. How to tell a lame joke and not have people punch you in the mouth.

We started taking notes at parties: what made them interesting, or fun, or, at times, unmitigated dumpster fires. We developed strong opinions about dinner parties. Very strong opinions. Very very strong opinions. And we began to respect dinner parties. Far from their frivolous reputation, we realized, dinner parties, properly thrown, can serve as the very CORNERSTONE OF A HEALTHY MODERN SOCIETY, because they create happy and empathetic humans. And leftovers. Which, yum.

Alas, theres something rotten in the state of dinner parties. And its not lutefisk.

Its that people arent having enough of them anymore.

We hear this all the time from older listeners who say theyre too busy or tired to throw dinner parties. Or from millennial listeners who confess that the closest theyve ever come to throwing a dinner party is sharing Altoids with their roommates whilst making student loan payments over pirated Wi-Fi. A few years back, no less a journal than the New York Times documented the death of the dinner party, noting, Informal gatherings occurring outside the home have largely replaced the dinner parties popular not long ago.

You know what informal gatherings occurring outside the home is a euphemism for, dont you? Fucking brunch, thats what.

OKAY , you are wondering impatiently, having now spent five minutes of your day on this weird book, so what exactly makes brunch anathema to a happy life and society? And why specifically should I care that it has displaced the dinner party from its once-exalted spot at the center of our civilization?

You wonder this because you have not yet meditated upon our DINNER PARTY MANIFESTO. In it, we lay out the foundational principles that, when recognized and acted upon by all humankind, will create a joyful social existence, a fully functioning society and just, like, nicer times, man.