Welcome to a new feature on this here blog o’ vittles and bitchosity! Brunch Up or Shut Up is my musings on the eternal debates of brunch and an invitation for you all to blather right back at me in the comments. Are any of the options displayed here correct or incorrect? Technically, no. But in reality I will assume I’m right unless convinced otherwise.

What to drink with brunch? If your answer is “just water,” you can fuck off for this post and return another time. There isn’t anything wrong with water, but there isn’t anything right with it either. It’s less of a choice and more of a glass of neutral. Honestly, I assume most people all are also drinking water in addition to their cups of liquid they had to actually make a decision about. Drinking water only is pure laziness.

As I’m sure people have noticed, I drink coffee and Talls drinks juice – orange juice, specifically.  There was a time now buried to current memory (a.k.a. before I went to grad school) that I hated coffee and drank tea exclusively.  With this amazing range of drink consumption I feel I am fully equipped to settle the score on the question of coffee vs. tea vs. juice.

Contender One: Coffee!

Coffee is a breakfast/brunch/lunch/ohgodIneedcaffeine standard for a reason.  It is full of caffeine!  It can be flavored with lots of different things so it doesn’t punch you in the face with bitterness!  It can not be flavored with things so you can be ballsy and savor the bitterness!  It can actually taste good on it’s own!  It can be hot or iced!  It can julienne fries!  It took me a bit to get into coffee because I am cheap and so the stuff I was drinking was often bitter, but my caffeine needs propelled me into the black arms of this dried, roasted, ground berry.  I have had good coffee, and I have had bad coffee, but I will basically always order the coffee because my brain doesn’t switch on til I taste it.  Seriously, I have a Pavlovian response going on and will feel more alert after drinking decaf even if I know at the time it’s decaf.  Oh brain, you’re so dumb!  But yeah, coffee has pushed tea largely out of my brunch life at this point.  This is at least part due to me being a giant tea snob and thus struggling to find restaurant teas I like, whereas I’ll drink pretty much any brown water poured out of a carafe.

Contestant Two: Tea!

As I said above, I am a tea snob.  I have teapinions.  I want my black tea Indian and strong enough to stand a horseshoe up in.  I want my green tea roasted with brown rice.  Most tisanes (fruit or herbal tea with no actual bit of tea plant in them) are not my thing, aside from mint tea, which should be sharp and herby instead of sweet.  I do not demand loose leaf, I just want to like what I’m drinking.  Being hard to please I usually don’t drink tea outside of the house or I bring my own.  I’m a little more reasonable with iced tea but I think that’s because my brain classifies it under “juice” instead.  Dumb, dumb brain.  But NO sweet tea!  I’m not a hummingbird so that stuff is disgusting.

Opponent Three: Juice!

I was tempted to ask Talls to write an Ode to Juice for this, but I feel I have a firm foundation for my opinions here having sat next to and/or across from him as he drinks juice for as long as I have.  I have even been known to steal a sip or two when he says it’s really good.  The best juice? Passionfruit.  Seriously.  If you live in Boston or Framingham you can get it at the Padaria Brasil bakeries in Allston and Framingham center.  It is worth it and their cheesey buns are also good.  These are not brunch places, but they are a way to get damn good Passionfruit juice in the US, which is hard because it doesn’t ship well.  Talls told me it was the best juice ever, and I laughed.  And then I had it, and I laughed no more because I was too busy guzzling the stuff.

Second best, at least for the juice-loving gent I live with, is orange juice.  There is a HUGE taste difference between fresh squeezed and not, so if you can get fresh squeezed (and are okay with the price), you should.  Just like you should get citrus mailed directly from Florida if possible and eat your cherry tomatoes straight off the vine, fresh squeezed orange juice is simply fantastic.  Talls has ordered juice so good I wished for a caffeinated version so I could forsake my coffee.  Then I realized people do caffeinate juice and the offerings sound super gross.  So let’s acknowledge that good orange juice is damn good, and leave it at that.

—-The Winner!—-

Coffee.  Duh.  I don’t drink it every morning because I think it sucks, people.  Tea and juice are good and everything, but they don’t flip the wake up switch and make me feel cozy the way coffee does.  Coffee “Let’s go!” that is just the right amount of punch and not too jarring.  Also I can get it basically anywhere since I’ll drink basically any coffee.  I care about the quality of my tea and juice, and that makes them less useful.  I don’t want to not enjoy my drink at brunch, so coffee it must be.

But that coffee with preheated milk at the cafeteria thing in Brasil was hands down the best.