Brunch

Although brunch is its specialty, Brunch in fact serves three meals a day (except Sunday and Monday, when it closes at 4pm). Nearly the whole menu is available all the time, meaning you can have eggs Benedict for dinner and a burger for breakfast. After 5pm, a strictly-dinner menu is added, offering the likes of hanger steak, roasted fish, and a loaded fried chicken platter.

Fan-District brainchild of the same team who created the notably successful Lunch-Supper, Brunch is an eclectic place where people come to eat, chat, and drink wild and crazy cocktails … including one called Cereal Killer #2, which is Moonshine infused with Cinnamon Toast crunch! An intense humdinger listed under the “Hyper Seasonal” section of the drink menu is the Ol VA Blackberry Julep: bourbon, macerated blackberries, sweet tea, and fresh mint. The very aroma of the mint is dizzying and the flavor-punch verges on overkill.

As for the food, everything I’ve tasted shares the intensity of those drinks. Flavors are big and bold, spices swirl, beef oozes juice, salads are radiant with garden-fresh ingredients and powerful dressings.

The menu is huge, 9 pages altogether, from appetizers and salads through Benedicts and brunch bowls to sandwiches and Main Street meals. I’m especially impressed by Jumbo Shrimp (an after-5pm dinner entree) that come on a bed of succotash-crab meat risotto sparkling with Cajun spice. Also noteworthy: a pork poutine brunch bowl containing sweet potato fries, smoked gouda, and crisp pork belly lardons; a Monte Cristo made with country ham, smoked turkey, and gruyere; and “brunch links,” which are pancake-battered, house-made sausage with spicy maple syrup.

Desserts include deluxe ice cream sandwiches from Richmond’s Nightingale ice creamery and one of the wickedest (and most impossible-to-stop-eating) bread puddings ever, made not with bread but with Krispy Kreme donuts.

Brunch’s house watchwords are: “It doesn’t matter when you get here, it’s always the best experience of the day.”