Friday, January 27, 2012

Unnatural Selection: Brunch at a Sports Bar


I grew up a 15 minute walk from Fenway Park, the oldest baseball stadium in the country and home of the Boston Red Sox. Two of my brothers worked in the food stands at Fenway as teenagers, so despite never having paid for a ticket, I went to a lot of Sox games as a kid, ate a lot of ballpark food, and collected quite a few autographs at the back gate of the players parking lot. Those are some of best memories of growing up, so it would be hard not to be a Red Sox fan.

Because my dad is a fan, I also grew up watching the Celtics in the post-Bird days when their seasons ranged from mediocre to terrible. Ever the immigrant, my dad never took to baseball but basketball's fast pace and universally understood premise appealed to him. I didn't appreciate his love of basketball until I realized that I had inherited his yell-at-the-screen style of zealous Celtics fandom. All that said, I am a sports fan -- an obnoxious Boston sports fan -- with a dirty secret: I don't really care for football.

With New England Patriots taking on the Giants (who defeated Pats in 2008) in Super Bowl 46 this year, it feels like I should care. So I'm committing myself to caring about the Super Bowl. To gear up for it, I'm going to watch the NFL Pro Bowl game this weekend. (Yes, I know it's a meaningless ratings grab game, but at least I'll know who all the players are.)

To get myself psyched up for the Pro Bowl, I'm going to have a thematically appropriate brunch at a sports bar this weekend. In many cities that might sound like a mythical beast, but here in San Francisco there are a lot of options for brunching surrounded by flat screens exclusively dedicated to airing sports. Given SF's love of brunch, it would be silly for sports bars with decent kitchens not to jump on the brunch band wagon in this city.

Although there are options, I have my doubts as to whether a sports bar can actually serve up a decent brunch, it just seems like such an unnatural pairing. Or is it? Sunday games are a time when people come together for bouts of daytime drinking and feasting, which is at the heart of every good brunch. Maybe the sports bar brunch is the next evolution of brunch, making it an acceptable meal for bros to eat together without the presence of a female. Or maybe it's a fad that won't take off: can sports bars with full kitchens capture enough of the trendy San Francisco brunch spenders to make it worthwhile?

And so, with low expectations but an open mind, the journey begins. Expect a full report soon.

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