I'm a Supper Man

Our friend Becky from New York is in town, and between her family gatherings and assorted goings on, she usually tries to squeeze in a quick visit to Melissa and I out here on the Northwest side. This has led to a conflict between Brunch Culture and Supper Culture, which expands beyond a simple scheduling issue about what one does with one’s Sunday to encompass differing visions of what makes for a well-lived life. I would like to advocate for the pleasures of the Sunday supper.

For the uninitiated, here are a few specifics: Sunday supper is served in the early afternoon, the jewel stone of the traditional day of rest, a big meal typically eaten a couple hours after church is over, where everyone in the household, and often extended friends and family, breaks bread together and gives thanks for the blessings of this world. In contrast, Sunday brunch is typically eaten around noon, after a leisurely start to the morning, and while it may be served at someone’s house, in practice it is more often partaken of at a restaurant.

Sunday supper is superior to Sunday brunch in myriad ways. It caps a day well spent, be it in praise of the joys of the planet and the love of God, or out on a day trip, or even something more prosaic, like doing errands or working in the garden. The activities of the day are done, and it is time to relax with those near and dear. In contrast, brunch is typically one of the first things you do after getting out of bed, but by the time brunch is over, the day if basically done. Before you know it comes the darkness, and then bed, and then back to the grind for another work week.

Besides, the food is much better at Sunday supper: the hearty dishes, the pork chops and the pot roasts, the flavorful sides, Brussels sprouts and garlic mashed potatoes or Swiss chard with hard boiled egg, a bottle of wine to share, and then maybe, if it’s in season and you’re lucky, some peach cobbler or blueberry buckle for dessert. Contrast that to the shallow joys of a Sunday brunch, the fatty breakfast meats, the French toast where they try to sneak in some savory element, like pea shoots or mango salsa, just to fill things out a bit. And hey, I like having a cup of coffee or tea, or even a mimosa, in the morning as much as the next guy, but I’ll take a good glass of wine or a couple of cold beers during supper over that any day, maybe finishing things off in the living room, sharing a bit of port, taking the edge off the inevitable downer of another work week looming ahead.

We didn’t have Sunday suppers when I was growing up in California. This is a Midwestern concept, one that I found very alien upon first moving here: “You mean you serve a meal on Sunday not much later than you’d normally eat lunch, but you call it supper, and it’s the biggest meal of the day?” It was part of an alien culture, something that I would have to adapt to, like tailgating, REO Speedwagon, and baggo, things I had vaguely heard about growing up but imagined as oddities, like hot dogs without ketchup. After almost 20 years here, I have adapted, reveling in the joys of tailgating, baggo, and Chicago style hot dogs (the REO Speedwagon I still have a problem with), but Sunday supper is more than just a matter of regional taste, it is a way of looking at the world, of orienting your spare time towards doing things while the sun is up, of being close with your entire household, of breaking bread with them, of sharing a big collective meal, rather than the brunch attitude of picking and choosing your friends and your favorite things off the menu.

I didn’t really go to many Sunday brunches growing up, either, but at least I understood the concept, that it’s a fancy breakfast people have towards the middle of the day. I certainly understood the time component, of getting up late and having one less meal to contend with, except that my idea of Sunday brunch back in my 20’s consisted of a Jack in the Box Bacon Cheeseburger and a large Dr. Pepper.

So I came to Chicago with a fairly clean slate regarding the issue of the central Sunday meal. During the past decade of being married to the granddaughter of an Eastside steelworker and a half-dozen years of living on the Northwest side, where Sunday suppers are still commonplace, I’ve grown to appreciate their joys.

Sometimes I get sad on the way home from church, looking at all the folks in the neighborhoods near the lakefront lined up outside their favorite eateries, waiting for their overpriced brunches. It reminds me of my not so distant past, of a hundred wasted Sundays, dissolute, atomistic, standing in line. If I’m feeling particularly generous towards my fellow man, I might imagine taking a carload of these hipsters home, of reading them the Bible and then serving them pot roast with prunes, a favorite of my wife’s family from back in the day when they’d all drive from their respective suburbs down to her grandparents’ place on the Southeast side to share Sunday supper together. But I imagine that to many of those folks standing in the brunch line, eating pot roast and prunes, not to mention listening to a crazy man recite the prophet Isaiah, would be a particularly miserable way to spend their weekend. So I leave them to their own quite different Sunday reveries, just like I leave Becky’s family to enjoy their Sunday brunch, with their designer coffee, their bagels, their Belgian waffles and fresh fruit, all of which are fine things. It’s just that to me they pale in comparison to the joys of the Sunday supper, of a Middle American life well lived.