Why Anthony Bourdain Refused To Eat Brunch Food

There's no shortage of foods Anthony Bourdain hated with a passion. The late chef, author, and TV personality was one for hard truths and no compromises, with readers and viewers eagerly lapping up the insider tea he was more than willing to spill. But many of Bourdain's restaurant industry maxims still hold true ... particularly when it comes to his unequivocal disgust for brunch.

"Brunch menus are an open invitation to the cost-conscious chef, a dumping ground for the odd bits left over from Friday and Saturday nights or for the scraps generated in the normal course of business," Bourdain wrote in his iconic memoir, "Kitchen Confidential." According to him, because brunch is only served twice a week, the quality of the brunch dishes is deprioritized. Since it isn't considered the main attraction, there isn't as much care and intentionality put into it. After all, why sweat classic brunch dishes like French toast after you've spent all week cooking filet mignon?

A large part of the brunch issue is the delivery schedule for restaurants. Most restaurants get their meat, fish, and produce delivered on Tuesdays, at the start of the restaurant week (since many restaurants are closed on Mondays). There might be a second delivery scheduled for Friday, but by the time the weekend rolls around, you never know what ingredients, on the verge of becoming Sunday night's trash, could end up on your Saturday brunch plate.

In general, according to Anthony Bourdain in "Kitchen Confidential," weekend dining is for "philistine[s]." During the week — when the kitchen staff has more energy, the ingredients are fresh from the market, and the tourists haven't yet piled in for a Friday night on the town — is when the food is really going to be good. Weekend dining becomes more about convenience or the vibe than the food itself — brunch included. And the cognitive dissonance between a well-respected restaurant serving a separate brunch menu that probably bears no resemblance to what it normally sells creates an atmosphere where all restaurants become indistinguishable once those bloody marys start rolling out.

Anthony Bourdain was one of the first in a long line of restaurant industry workers to lay it out on the line: all people who work in restaurants hate brunch, not just him. (It's even a full plot point on the TV show "The Bear.")

"Brunch is demoralizing to the serious line cook," he wrote in "Kitchen Confidential." "Nothing makes an aspiring Escoffier feel more like an army commissary cook, or Mel from Mel's Diner, than having to slop out eggs over bacon and eggs Benedict for the Sunday brunch crowd."

It's also one of the busiest times of the week for restaurant staff, where they have to deal with large groups of mimosa-fueled people lingering for hours over eight slightly different versions of the same egg white omelet (and preventing servers from turning tables in the process). Dishes tend to be priced lower than dinner mains, meaning fewer tips for servers. You have to wake up early to work (after you've potentially closed the night before), and the entire flow of the restaurant is interrupted from its weekday routine. According to Bourdain, this is why brunch is usually left to the cooks who don't have enough seniority to get out of it ... and they're probably hungover, too. Knowing all this, wouldn't you give that parfait another thought?