Booze, Biscuits and Bands: Musical Brunch Is Back in New York

The room was full of tipsy get together individuals when the drag queen Ginger Snap abruptly grabbed my wrist and planted my hand on her proper falsy — and with exhilarated eyes gave me a glance that passionately purred: Brunch is again, woman.

That’s how I kicked off a day at Broadway Drag Brunch, one in every of a number of live-entertainment brunches that, after an extended pause attributable to coronavirus restrictions, are feeding music-loving and hungry patrons in New York, the place brunch is church.

A few of these brunches are like intimate concert events with music as an atmospheric backdrop. At others, the star of the present is the present itself — with performers encouraging hands-in-the-air singalongs and servers nudging you to order pitchers of bottomless cocktails to drink with the prix fixe omelets and pancakes. The music ranges from boy-band ballads to sit back jazz and lonesome bluegrass, and the areas embody a below-ground membership and an idyllic waterfront.

Listed below are six weekend musical brunches that — barring coronavirus restrictions — will quench your thirst for tunes and toe-tapping to go together with your booze and biscuits.

Boys Are the Band

Candy seduction is on the menu at Boy Band Brunch, held each different Sunday afternoon at one in every of New York’s new children on the block: Chelsea Desk + Stage, a efficiency venue that opened in September contained in the Hilton New York Style District resort. It stars the Boy Band Venture, a flirty quartet with members who belt, dance, thrust their pelvises and sing the “Please don’t go, woman” musical repertoires of ’NSync, Boyz II Males and different crush-inducing boy bands of the Nineties and 2000s.

The forged rotates, however at a current efficiency, the bandmates have been performed by Chris Messina (the sporty one), Sam Harvey (the not-that-bad boy), Christopher Brasfield (the boy subsequent door) and Nic Metcalf (the delicate one). The tables have been stuffed with principally millennials and Gen Xers brunching on smoked salmon avocado toast and singing together with each lyric, as if Justin Timberlake himself have been on one knee pleading for his or her affections.

If the vibe appears like Backstreet Boys meets Broadway, it’s no marvel: The Boy Band Venture was created by Travis Nesbitt, a former forged member of “Altar Boyz,” a musical satire of a Christian boy band that had successful Off Broadway run within the 2000s. (chelseatableandstage.com)

Breakfast Bebop

Eye-popping Hudson Valley vistas accompany the vamps at Sunday Jazz Brunch at Cove Fort, a lakeside restaurant in Greenwood Lake, N.Y. Positioned a few 45-minute drive from the George Washington Bridge (or a 10-minute drive from the Metro-North station in Tuxedo, N.Y.), the city doesn’t have the identical weekend bustle and creative cache as close by Beacon or Hudson. However that’s a draw for brunchers, particularly those that pull up of their boats to dock and dine in an 80-seat room with sweeping views of Greenwood Lake, in addition to the hills and woodlands of Sterling Forest State Park.

Together with Cove Fort, the Sunday brunch is hosted by the Hudson Valley Jazz Competition, which helps program the principally native bands. The menu is brunch consolation meals, together with challah French toast and a trio of sausages served with Brazilian cheese bread. (covecastleny.com)

Latin and Cuban are the musical types you’re more likely to hear throughout jazz brunch at 1803, a nook restaurant in TriBeCa. Named for the yr of the Louisiana Buy, the New Orleans-inspired venue contains a rotating schedule of native ensembles. On a current Saturday, a jazz trio — Eduardo Belo on bass, Rogério Boccato on drums and Vinicius Gomes on guitar — made the ethereal two-story eating room really feel just like the French Quarter by the use of São Paulo, Brazil.

The menu is heavy on bayou fare, together with a crawfish-cake benedict, gumbo and jambalaya (a vegan choice is made with a crispy tofu); and Southern favorites like hen and waffles and a rosemary-forward macaroni and cheese. (1803nyc.com)

A Glass of Twang

Brunches with honest-to-goodness reside nation music are scarce in New York, and that absolutely makes nation followers madder than a cat getting baptized.

Filling that void is Spaghetti Tavern, an Higher West Aspect bar and restaurant that hosts bluegrass brunches on the weekends. Final Sunday, it was as if the 65-seat eating room have been nestled within the Blue Ridge Mountains, because of Pickin’ Parm, a quartet made up of Kris Bauman (banjo), Ross Martin (guitar), Kells Nollenberger (bass) and Cesar Moreno (mandolin). “It is a tune about choosing up farm ladies,” Moreno introduced with a smile, to which diners responded with applause and a “yeehaw!” It was a cool spring day so the doorways have been open, giving passers-by a style of honky-tonk.

The menu options conventional brunch fare with Italian twists, together with a spaghetti frittata wedge and baked cannellini beans and eggs. However the home specialty is Spaghetti in a Bag: pasta tossed in a sauce (decide amongst pesto, cacio e pepe and others) and served piping sizzling in an outsized parchment satchel. The bottomless mimosas are available in a cute refillable ceramic donkey, as a result of why not. (spaghettitavern.com)

Curtain Up, Chow Down

Annie, Effie, Mimi: No Broadway diva is protected from sendup on the R-rated Broadway Drag Brunch, a raucous meal-and-a-show that performs twice on Sundays at Lips, a long-running drag club-restaurant that now lives on a quiet stretch of Midtown East, the place it moved in 2010 after greater than a dozen years at its authentic house within the West Village.

On a current afternoon, it was principally younger girls within the viewers, together with brides-to-be and birthday revelers who, at one level within the present, lined as much as sit on a throne and take a photograph with the sharp-tongued Ginger Snap. (“I scent Lengthy Island Railroad,” Miss Snap advised one desk.) The forged of drag queens lip-synced to numbers from Broadway musicals together with “Dreamgirls,” “Lease” and “Jekyll & Hyde,” however the crowd turned essentially the most labored up when the D.J. reduce present tunes with pop hits.

The is the one brunch on this listing that doesn’t embody reside music and singing, however give a queen a break: The performers double as servers (and work exhausting for suggestions). Thirty {dollars} will get you a musical-themed entree, just like the Sweeney Todd steak and eggs, or the Mamma Mia mozzarella omelet — and a bloody mary or mimosa. Add $6 and the cocktails are limitless. (nycdragshow.com)

A Laborious Evening’s Morning

Paul and Ringo meet pizza and ratatouille each Sunday for the nostalgic Strawberry Fields: Final Beatles Brunch. The meal-meets-concert had an 18-year run on the former B.B. King Blues Membership & Grill in Occasions Sq.; it’s now a weekend staple at Metropolis Vineyard’s 32,000-square-foot venue, which opened in October 2020 and overlooks the Hudson River at Pier 57 on Manhattan’s West Aspect. The present options classic instrumentation and amplification of songs from the Beatles catalog sung by costumed forged members, lots of whom carried out with the Broadway and touring firms of the long-running musical “Beatlemania.”

The $55 ticket consists of the present and a limiteless breakfast buffet; bottomless drink packages are additionally obtainable. It’s a good way to introduce kids underneath 12 to the Fab 4: They get in for free of charge, with brunch meals obtainable for buy. (citywinery.com)