Dubai's Friday Brunch: How a Weekend Meal Became a City Institution

How Dubai's Friday brunch grew from the 1895 word and American hotel Sunday brunch into all-inclusive hotel buffets, and what changed in 2022.

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5 min read

^{FROM GUY BERINGER'S 1895 ESSAY TO THE ALL-INCLUSIVE HOTEL BUFFETS OF DUBAI}

Canal waterways lined with palm trees and Arabian-style resort buildings at Madinat Jumeirah — The waterways of Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, 2012. Image: Donaldytong, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Dubai's Friday brunch is a long weekend meal, usually a hotel buffet sold at a fixed price with a drinks package, that Gulf News has called "a Dubai institution". The word brunch dates from 1895, when the writer Guy Beringer used it in an essay in Hunter's Weekly, and a late-morning meal of the same kind was already being served in New Orleans under another name. American hotels promoted Sunday brunch from the 1930s. In Dubai, where Friday was for many years the only day off for most residents, expatriates adopted the hotel brunch as a weekly social occasion, and venues developed it into packages priced by drinks tier, with live cooking stations, multi-restaurant spreads and children's areas. When the UAE weekend moved to Saturday and Sunday at the start of 2022, many of those brunches moved with it.

^{WHAT IS BRUNCH AND WHERE DID THE WORD COME FROM?}

Painting of huntsmen in red coats gathered around a breakfast table indoors — Bachelors' Hall: The Hunt Breakfast, by Francis Calcraft Turner, 1842. Image: Francis Calcraft Turner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Merriam-Webster defines brunch as a meal usually taken late in the morning that combines a late breakfast and an early lunch. It records the word as a blend of breakfast and lunch and gives its first known use as 1895. Smithsonian magazine, in a 2011 history of the meal by Jesse Rhodes, says one point about its origins "does seem certain": the word first appeared in print in an 1895 Hunter's Weekly article. The article was "Brunch: A Plea", written by the British author Guy Beringer.

Beringer's case, as Smithsonian reports it, was an alternative to the heavy Sunday meal eaten after church. He proposed lighter food served late in the morning and described the meal as "cheerful, sociable and inciting". What came before the word is less clear. Smithsonian sets out two theories held by food historians. The first is that brunch descends from England's hunt breakfasts, which it describes as lavish multi-course meals. The second is that Sunday brunch grew out of the Catholic practice of fasting before Mass and then sitting down to a large midday meal. Smithsonian presents both as views held by some historians rather than settled fact.

^{MADAME BÉGUÉ AND THE SECOND BREAKFAST OF NEW ORLEANS}

Black and white street view of two-storey buildings with balconies on a New Orleans corner — Madison Street, New Orleans, looking from Decatur Street towards Chartres Street, with Begue's Exchange Restaurant on the corner, 1906. Image: Detroit Publishing Company, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A late-morning meal of the kind Beringer named was already a restaurant trade in New Orleans. According to The Historic New Orleans Collection, Elizabeth Kettenring emigrated from Bavaria in 1853, aged 22, and married the butcher Louis Dutreuil. In 1863 the couple opened Dutrey's Coffee Exchange at 207 Old Levée Street, now 823 Decatur Street, across from the French Market. She noticed that the market's butchers were hungry by 11 a.m. Dutrey's served one meal a day, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., which she called "second breakfast", or zweites Frühstück: a spread of six to seven courses.

Louis Dutreuil died in 1875. Hypolite Bégué, a French-born former butcher, became the bartender in 1877 and had married the widowed Elizabeth by 1880, when the business was renamed H. Bégué's Exchange. Visitors to the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition of 1884 to 1885 found the restaurant and gave it national attention, and her recipes were published by the Southern Pacific Railroad, with a 1900 edition titled Mme. Begué and Her Recipes: Old Creole Cookery. She died in her room above the restaurant on 19 October 1906, aged 75. In 1914 the business was merged into its neighbour, Tujague's. The Collection notes that she never called her meal brunch.

^{HOW DID SUNDAY BRUNCH BECOME A HOTEL MEAL IN AMERICA?}

Smithsonian dates the spread of brunch in the United States to the 1930s. The explanation it gives is qualified with "supposedly": that Hollywood stars making transcontinental train trips frequently stopped off in Chicago for a late-morning meal. Smithsonian identifies hotels as the meal's main promoters in this period. Because most restaurants were closed on Sundays, it reports, hotels championed brunch, so in the United States the Sunday meal spread first through hotel dining rooms, which stayed open on the one day of the week when most restaurants did not.

After the Second World War, Smithsonian continues, church attendance in the United States declined and people looked for a new Sunday social outlet that also let them sleep late. Restaurants responded with larger spreads and signature morning cocktails such as the Bloody Mary, the Bellini and the Mimosa. In a 1980 Chicago Tribune article cited by Smithsonian, the Stanford professor Carl Degler connected the meal's popularity to large numbers of American married women entering the workforce for the first time. In his account, married women needed a break on Sunday too, and Sunday brunch eaten out provided one.

^{WHY WAS DUBAI'S BRUNCH HELD ON A FRIDAY?}

Black and white photo of a Comet jet airliner parked on an airport apron — A Middle East Airlines Comet, the first jet aircraft to land on the new runway at Dubai Airport, 1965. Image: Patche99z, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The National's 2010 feature on UAE brunches, by Mike Gimignani, says a Friday meal was a core part of life in Arabia long before hotels set up huge buffet counters to tempt expatriate residents and tourists, and that the modern hotel version "bears little resemblance" to its traditional predecessor. Len Chapman, editor of Dubai As It Used To Be and a Gulf resident from the 1960s, told the paper that until the early 1990s Friday was the only day off for most of the population. That made it, in his words, the only day when families could be together all day.

The same feature reports that in those early years expatriates latched onto the Friday brunch as a way to socialise and entertain themselves when there were fewer alternatives. Chapman's view was that once Dubai moved to a two-day weekend, residents had more free time and Friday lunch became less important. The hotel brunch nonetheless kept Friday as its day. A CNN Travel guide first published in 2013 described Friday as the first day of the UAE weekend and brunch as a weekly event frequented mostly by expatriates. One resident quoted by CNN called it an easy way to bring together people who did not necessarily know each other.

^{WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A DUBAI FRIDAY BRUNCH?}

Hotel brunch buffet table with platters of salads and seafood — Brunch buffet at Hotel MacDonald, 2009. Image: Mack Male, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The standard Dubai brunch is sold as a package. Writing in Khaleej Times in 2015, Sushmita Bose described many large hotels and restaurants offering an all-inclusive buffet of food and drinks, sometimes replaced by a set menu, and noted that Dubai brunches usually started around 1pm. Gulf News, in a 2020 guide to 120 venues by Yousra Zaki, listed prices by drinks tier: soft drinks, house beverages or sparkling wine. La Festa at Matto in Paradise, at Rixos The Palm, charged Dh250 for women and Dh350 for men. Its range ran from Dh99 with soft drinks for an Indian brunch at Grayton Hotel to Dh799 for the sparkling package at The Loft's Thursday night brunch at Dubai Opera. CNN noted it was not uncommon to spend $100 or more.

Most brunches are laid out as a hotel buffet spread across several stations or restaurants. The National described JW Marriott Dubai running three restaurants together for its brunch: an international buffet hall, a German restaurant and the jungle-themed Bamboo Lagoon. At Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi the paper counted more than 200 dishes, four carving stations and a fresh pasta station, served from 12.30pm to 3.30pm. Gulf News listed eight live food stations at the same La Festa brunch, a live carvery station at Hillhouse Brasserie, and a wood-fired pizza oven with a live pasta and risotto station at Via Del Matto in The Oberoi.

Family brunches form a separate category. Gulf News listed several brunches with children's areas; at Amwaj Rotana, children aged six to twelve paid half price and those under six ate free. It also listed the Saturday brunch at Ronda Locatelli in Atlantis The Palm, an Italian family-style meal from 12:30pm to 3:30pm at Dh195 with soft drinks or Dh295 with house beverages. CNN listed Mina A'Salam, which had an indoor children's zone staffed by nannies. The National's JW Marriott brunch included a children's play area with a bouncy castle. Not every brunch was a buffet: CNN also listed Toro Toro, which served its brunch as a sit-down, à la carte meal.

^{HOW DID DUBAI BRUNCH FORMATS MULTIPLY?}

Two champagne glasses filled with sparkling wine against a dark background — Champagne glasses, 2017. Image: Myriam Zilles, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

By 2013 the brunch had divided into sub-formats. CNN described party brunches with DJs at Saffron and Yalumba and a dance floor at Warehouse, which sold its brunch in one word: "Drunch". The Associated Press, reporting from Dubai in January 2022, listed the post-brunch brunch, the evening brunch and the midnight "party brunch". It also described themed events: a James Bond steakhouse, a Wolf of Wall Street-inspired brunch at the Waldorf Astoria with cash falling from the ceiling, lip-sync battles, a spread of lamb shanks beside a petting zoo and chocolate fountains. All-you-can-drink Champagne packages, AP reported, cost more than $200.

CNBC, reporting in June 2022, gave the traditional hours as about 12:30 p.m. until after 4:30 p.m. It cited Bubbalicious at The Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi at 695 dirhams per person, with unlimited drinks across three restaurants and a large outdoor terrace and an extensive seafood spread. Bleu Blanc at The St. Regis Downtown Dubai charged 700 dirhams, about $191, a head for unlimited Champagne. Brunches had run under Covid-19 safety protocols during the pandemic, and CNBC reported that many of the stricter protocols had since been dropped by Dubai's hotels, as venues worked to attract big-spending brunch guests.

^{WHAT HAPPENED TO FRIDAY BRUNCH AFTER 2022?}

At the start of 2022 the UAE weekend moved from Friday and Saturday to Saturday and Sunday. Khaleej Times, reporting on 6 January 2022, noted that many restaurants had already been hosting brunches on both weekend days. Saurabh Tiwari, general manager of Taj Dubai, told the paper the hotel would move its Friday brunches at The Eloquent Elephant and Bombay Brasserie one day forward, suggested Friday could suit a "night brunch", and predicted that Saturday would be the new brunch day across the city. Jean Young Pittion, director of food and beverage at Conrad Abu Dhabi Emirates Towers, said its Friday and Saturday brunches would shift with the new weekend.

The Associated Press reported that restaurants adopted the tagline "Saturday is the new Friday" and that managers pitched Sunday brunch as a hangover breakfast. Roberto's Restaurant and Lounge changed its branding, scheduling and reservation systems, while LPM Restaurant and Bar moved its classic brunch to Sunday. By June 2022 CNBC reported that hotels described brunch as moving to Saturday rather than ending, because most private-sector workers still worked on Fridays. Diners, CNBC added, had adapted, with one resident pairing a Saturday brunch with a Sunday roast, and the general manager of DoubleTree by Hilton Dubai on Jumeirah Beach Residence saying the shift had gone smoothly with guests.

^{THE BAY AT MANDARIN ORIENTAL JUMEIRA, DUBAI}

Long dining room at The Bay, Mandarin Oriental Jumeira Dubai, with green banquettes, timber tables and a beamed timber ceiling — The Bay, Mandarin Oriental Jumeira, Dubai

The Bay at Mandarin Oriental Jumeira, Dubai, completed by Silverfox Studios in 2019, is laid out around a marble buffet counter. Food is set out on white marble stations, each with a chalkboard menu, and a timber-topped bread and pastry island stands under pendants. The arrangement of separate counters and a dedicated bread and pastry island is the multi-station layout that The National and Gulf News describe in Dubai's hotel brunches, where food is served from several stations rather than from one long table.

The walls are white brick, laid above a geometric tiled floor; the history of brick walls finished in white is covered in painted white brick, limewash and whitewash, and the marble quarries of Tuscany in Carrara marble and the Apuan Alps. Seating at The Bay is on green banquettes under a beamed timber ceiling, and steel-framed glazing lines the room. A marble-fronted bar faces the beach terrace and, beyond it, the sea. Marble is used for the buffet counter, the stations and the bar front, and timber for the island top and the ceiling beams.