BLOODY BRUNCH.

Saturday mornings are undoubtedly one of the most sublime times of the week. Slow wake-ups followed by sipping coffee with a taste that can only be described as ‘comfortable’, lazily reading whatever you please because it’s Saturday and the world is your breakfast oyster. Throw in some jazz, bossa nova or even alt-rock if that’s your vibe, and it’s like butter melting on toast. What’s more – you’d struggle to mess it up, I mean how could you? You merely need to exist in the moment.

Wrong.

It is completely possible to fuck up the most treasured time of the week. And how? With something no femme contemporaine can seem to avoid.

Brunch with the girls.

Oh, but it’s been months since you’ve seen Vivi, Bip, Bells, Pip, Mimi, Nips, Paris, India, Vienna, Brussels, Moscow, Lagos - you get the idea. The whole gang simply has to catch up, and what better way to do that than brunch on the sacred Saturday! So you wake up at some stupid hour like 8:00am, tease your hair, full face of makeup, phone charged and ready to go for those ‘grams and you drag your nearly lifeless corpse of a body out the door to some café that has seashells on the floor as you walk in, with sea breeze scented napkins and driftwood furniture – “omg so adorable”.

As you pause to read the ‘inspirational’ chalkboard that grabs your attention before the sea-mist spritzers do, you’re struck by the sense that the interior designer read Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse once in high school and unfortunately took the whole “stream of consciousness” thing in new and unintended directions. It makes you wonder how many times they had to resit their literature exam to fuck it up this badly.

However, all is not lost (at sea), as you manage to cheer yourself up with the promise of some delicious buttermilk pancakes with maybe fried chicken (à la Mary St Bakery) or beef benny with creamy harissa hollandaise which is your go-to at Typika. Your brain goes all steamy at the idea of the crispy slabs of polenta topped with a poached egg, decked in a lattice of parmesan (something you’ve devoured at Good Things). Gosh, some thick slices of buttery toast, warm with sweet apricot jam oozing into the porous sourdough, along with an espresso and an OJ will surely make all this conversation about Pip’s boyfriend-brother’s-best friend’s boat slightly (ever so slightly) less painful. However, just as Paris launches into the topic of her latest spiritual trip to India (not to be confused with India’s recent shopping trip to Paris), you feel your heart sink into your hangover-ridden stomach as you see that the words ‘Acai’, ‘Raw’ and ‘Vegan’ grace the menu. Not an egg in sight. And you can forget about fried chicken. You’ll have to settle for the only carb – ‘bircher muesli with forest flowers and organic bark shavings’ (this may be a slight exaggeration of the actual item but just as well). You’ll later wash this deconstructed forest floor down with a green smoothie that puts your gag reflex to the test.

Trust me, your life changes once you realise that saying ‘no’ to bad company, and food you don’t particularly enjoy, is completely acceptable if not encouraged. Restaurants and cafés aren’t part of the food industry, nor are they part of the service industry. As Will Guidara told his staff at the re-opening of Eleven Madison Park, we’re in the human connection industry. This is just as relevant to Perth’s brunch spots as it is to the former No.1 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. So if you’re about to trade the beautiful and sacred experience of a Saturday morning for brunch – you better be sure as hell your company and the menu deserve the time slot. Similarly, when you want to venture out to your local Italian joint on a Wednesday night, or something a bit more special (read: expensive) on a Friday, you’re not going to ask Jane from accounts or Pete from the mailroom to join you (unless you, Jane and Pete are best buds, of course). You’d probably flick an email to Harry (who told you at the photocopier about a new wine bar he tried the previous night) and Ava (who you saw at a music gig on the weekend) with the subject line ‘Cheese and Vinoooo?’

Famous last words.