Wow Brook & Cathy... ya'll are really making me crave foods I ain't touched in a while!
The last 6 years of my career were spent in the work camps where we never did anything up fancy at all... in camps we made just good, homestyle grub and plenty of it- HUGE portions and LOTS available for the hungry workers. But prior to that was my time at more high-end properties that definitely included some elegant buffets and brunches.
From the employee standpoint I always loved working brunches 'cause they really gave the staff a chance to show-off talents that working the restaurant line and cooking off a menu really didn't give them the chance to showcase. I always had staff meetings Friday mornings where among other things we mapped out brunch and assigned tasks, and believe it or not I had staffers who normally didn't even work Friday mornings who showed up in their sweats and shorts simply so they could be included (at the Princess resorts where we also lived on premise, workers even came in their jammies!)- and so they'd get assigned some of the "funner" duties of Sunday Brunch.
Folks always loved specific chores like carving the ice, manning the omelet station, working the carving-station w/ the prime rib & ham & turkey breast, shucking oysters/clams, or preparing all the large mirrored displays like the fruit mirror, seafood displays, cheese, smoked salmon, etc. I also had a pair of girls who loved making the many compound salads every single week and they came up w/ the most colorful delicious salads I've ever seen/tasted!
As an employee who picked and munched off the brunch buffet all day long at work, and as a customer who often enjoys brunch out with family and friends my personal goal is to always eat small, light snippets of things to guarantee plenty of room in my belly for the largest variety of swiped-bites possible.
I always made room for one egg-benedict (I also love a crabcake or salmoncake bennie- minus the english muffin/bread- 'cause the bread takes up too much valueable real estate in my belly, don'cha know?!) and a tiny omelet filled w/ whatever but certainly topped w/ sour cream & salsa... fruit & cheese... I always required chocolate from the dessert table... I have a thing too for delicious peppery sausage-gravy on a biscuit or on an omelet.
At the Fairbanks Princess two of our most popular and demanded brunch entrees were Tequila-Marinated Flank Steak w/ sweet-corn salsa and Blue Cheese Halibut, and I crave both of these often. At the Kenai Princess which was a small property, we went through 300++ lbs. of iced snow-crablegs every Sunday. At the Denali Princess the waffle station & cheese blintzes were huge... at the McKinley Princess we couldn't prep enough fruit... seems though there were always "commonalities" at all locales- some places had their "thangs" they were just more known for, for whatever reason...
When I make brunch at home I usually cover the breakfast aspect with a smoked sausage/cheddar/sour-apple strata, always have melon & berries, always have salmon represented either as a chilled smoked apptzr or as a hot entree... and I'm a huge fan of beef. Dessert? Gotta have struesel coffee cake & chocolate mousse. Booze? Usually mild mimosas or bloody marys.
(today's avatar is a cheese tray from a brunch- I remember that silver tray well and loved working with it- it was from a country club I worked at about 20 years ago!)
