Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

My $6 secret to a buttery budget brunch

Turn frozen puff pastry into a golden egg tart and a sweet, jammy second act

Published July 20, 2026 10:30AM (EDT)

A version of this recipe first appeared in The Bite, Salon's food newsletter. Sign up for early access to articles like this, plus recipes, food-related pop culture recommendations and conversations about what we're eating, how and why.

Brunch is, culturally speaking, a meal of excess.

There are bottomless mimosas and $28 omelets, towers of French toast and Bloody Marys accessorized like seafood platters. At the peak of 2010s hipster brunch, I remember passing a restaurant whose chalkboard sign perpetually announced that the soup of the day was “whisky.” There, brunch lasted from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m., by which point the distinction between brunch and simply spending the entire day at a bar had become largely academic.

It is also the meal at which I most frequently perform what I call “a pancake for the table?” The act is very simple: I ask whether anyone would like a pancake for the table. They say yes. I order one pancake. The pancake arrives, exactly as promised, and everyone gets an extra bite of something sweet.

That tiny bit of superfluity is part of brunch’s appeal. Breakfast is necessary; brunch should feel as though someone has added a flourish.

That feeling can be strangely difficult to recreate at home. Even as someone who works in food, my first meal of the day tends to veer utilitarian, including on weekends, when I may not eat it until 10 or 11. Rice and eggs. A store-bought breakfast burrito. A good smoothie. All perfectly satisfying, but not exactly the sort of meal that makes you consider ordering a pancake for the bedroom.

I’m a firm believer that entertaining at home should not attempt to recreate a restaurant experience beat for beat. Dining out is one kind of pleasure; having people over is another. The useful question is not, “How do I turn my apartment into a restaurant?” It is, “What part of that hospitality do I want to borrow?”

Maybe it’s lower lighting, good hand soap in the bathroom or a beautiful bread course placed on the table before anyone has had time to wonder whether they are hungry. In the case of brunch, I think it is that feeling of having just a little too much: something savory and something sweet, a second round of coffee, one dish that seems more elaborate than the occasion strictly requires.

Our Summer sale is on!

The trick is creating that sense of abundance without requiring........

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