The Perfect Buenos Aires Brunch

One time in my life I had the perfect brunch in Buenos Aires. A brunch filled with bagels, French toast casserole drenched in maple syrup, salty and savory cold cuts, an assortment of flavored cream cheeses, bacon, fruit, granola, yogurt, fresh baked challah, all the fixings you could dream of, juice, champagne, vodka, gin, cucumber infuuuused water. It was a brunch fit for a king. Lay off smoking paco if you think you can get a brunch like this in any old Buenos Aires trendy café.  Dream on betches, you can’t. Sure, brunch restaurants have exploded in the past year, with the invented verb, brunchear, out in full force. But a real, hearty, delicious, flawless brunch menu that includes a large assortment of well executed favorites does not exist.  So, with this in mind, I teamed up with the ultimate hostess with the mostest / owner of the ex-Hotel Sundell to make the ultimate brunch.

Originally with talks of a closed door brunch restaurant, this brunch at Hotel Sundell was due to be somewhat of a test run, but we soon realized, like 5 minutes into planning, that opening a brunch puerta cerrada wouldn’t really be our thang (or my thang). Eating and drinking at a boozy brunch is awesome, prepping and cooking while others get to eat and drink is not.

The Menu:

Baines Best Bacon: Yes, you can have bacon delivered right to your door.  Real bacon, none of this pancetta shiznot. I love me my beercan credits. AR$45 per pound.

La Crespo Hot Pastrami: My favorite (and just about only) Jewish deli in Buenos Aires not only offers rocking food at their Villa Crespo location, but also caters for events. Yahtzee!  One kilo of HOT pastrami? Bring it on, suckers.  They even added a big bowl of caramelized onions and sliced pickles.

QuieroBagel Bagels: Since these bagels come in three different sizes, it was perfect to order an assortment of the medium size, giving everyone chance to have more than one (or more than 5) and fill it with all sorts of meats and fixins. A real carbed up delight of sesame, poppyseed, everything and plain bagels.

Flavored cream cheeses? You got it: plain for the yawners, salmon with dill for the Nordics and chive with onion for the zoo breath-ers.

French toast casserole:  Hey ya’ll, this is Paula’s recipe, made with yes, you guessed it, lots of buttery goodness. Bust out your best foodgasm face because this whole casserole tastes like the gooey insides of a cinnamon roll.  It’s pretty sexual. 

Let me challah at you for a minute.  Challah, brioche, JEW bread – call it what you will, this bread was made with a lot of under-the-influence-I-think-it’s-a-good-decision-to-start-making-dough-at-5am-love.
Fancy cheeses from a nice lil’ quesería on Guatemala y Thames (can’t remember the name).  Fiambres from the one and only Jumbo.

Granola + yogurt + blueberries for the health freaks.

Fresh cut flowers in yogurt jars, a brightly colored ceramic penguin pitcher, a lovely guest book, pretty napkins, a scale, imported fancy mustards and sauces. The set up, organization, design did NOT have my name written all over it.

Oh, how I wish I could eat this type of brunch on a weekly basis.  What’s better than a sunny Saturday afternoon drunk, smoked out food fest?  Now it’s time for someone to hook it up with some real brunch in this city.

Look at those dumb party catering putitas. How precious.

Check out more photos of drunk brunch day.

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