These are the types of conversations we have in real life all the time, but since this one was via text, we are able to save it for all posterity.

Rick: Joyce and Molly are going to brunch at 2:30 then going to DOS. We can meet them there and regroup

Ostrowe: At 2:30, its just lunch, but that’s a good plan

Rick:  But breakfast is still available

Ostrowe:  I think your just eating breakfast food for lunch at that point.  I’m gonna put the cutoff for brunch at 130. If you haven’t started eating by then, its lunch

Rick:  I would argue that the menu is what makes it brunch, not the time.  But once you ask for french toast at Slainte at 5:00P that just means you have issues

Ostrowe:  It can’t be the menu. IHOP serves breakfast 24/7. If I go there at 3am its not for brunch

Rick: IHOP is an outlier.  They don’t have distinctive menus. They let you eat whatever you want at anytime.

Ostrowe:  You can “have” brunch past 1:30. But you can’t go to brunch. You’re having brunch food for lunch. But you’re just going to lunch.

Rick:  So long as the brunch menu is available to order from you can truthfully say you are having brunch.

Ostrowe:  Yes. You can “have” brunch at any time. But you can’t go to brunch whenever you please.  If I wake up at 6pm and get a bagel, that doesn’t make it breakfast.  Its an entirely semantic argument. But those are my specialty.

Rick:  Is breakfast dictated by the time you eat it, or by its position in your day in relation to when you awake from sleep.  Breakfast is your first meal of the day in which you break the fast you had while you were sleeping.  If you go to bed at 4:00A and wake up at 6:00P I would argue that your bagel at 6:00P was breakfast for you that day

Ostrowe:  Both. Which I think is the crux of the issue. If I wake up at 6pm and have a delicious steak omelet, its my breakfast, but if I were going to a restaurant with others to get it, it would be dinner.  I wouldn’t say “I’m going to breakfast.”

Rick:  I feel like in that situation a lot of people would call it breakfast just so that people like us would question their statement then they would be able to go into the story of how they are so cool because they stayed out till 4A. What a great life they live. I should worship them

Ostrowe:  Yes but that situation would just result on me calling them out on their phrasing and refusing to let up until they concede.  Brunch is even more complex since its not a real meal

Rick:  If brunch is not a real meal does that mean a Liger is not a real animal, and a spork is not a utensil, and spanglish is not a language and muppets don’t exist and I can’t have sexcapades. I don’t want to live in that world.  It is a travesty and a sham and a mockery.  A travishamockery

Ostrowe:  Let’s say someone was born on Christmas and they were going out for drinks with a large group of people. While they might say, “I’m going out for my birthday,” the rest would say they were going out for Christmas. Both would technically be right, but ultimately Christmas would be the answer.  So birthday = brunch and Christmas = lunch.  What’s brunch to you is lunch to everyone else

Rick:  Depends on the sample size. Of all the people in NYC that are going out to eat before 4P today, I’d say 75% of them would say they were going to get brunch.  But that is because NYC residents are conditioned to brunch.

Ostrowe:  That is a very bold statement

Rick:  If you extend your sample size to the rest of the country, I think it would be 60-40 lunch to brunch

Ostrowe:  I feel like 75% is way too high a number

Rick:  I can’t wait to ask everyone at DOS if they went out to eat between 12 and 4 and what meal did they have

Ostrowe:  Science!

Rick: This is so New York.

Ostrowe:  In conclusion, just because it looks like breakfast, and tastes like breakfast, that doesn’t make it brunch