Fancy Sat Brunch/lunch where you have to wear a suit?

Hi, my sister and her boyfriend are flying in this weekend to meet my parents and he insists he wear a suit for the place where we will be eating brunch/lunch. I don't know of any places that either require a suit or at least somewhere where he won't feel out of place. Also many of the fancy, high end brunch locations, (sixteen, etc) are only for sunday it seems. Anyone have any recs on a place for sat 11-3pm where it would be appropriate for him to wear his suit in a formal brunch/lunch setting? I'm assuming I'm going to have to lead everyone to a high end hotel brunch/lunch. Thanks in advance to any replies.

Brunch with Alex P. Keaton?

And even though they aren't doing brunch service, the Four Seasons and Peninsula still do breakfast on Saturdays.

Just go to one of the great brunch places (Lula, M Henry) and let the goof wear his suit if he wants to.

You could have lunch in the Lobby at the Peninsula. Suits aren't required, but it's a nice enough setting where a suit would not be out of place.

The Lobby at the Peninsula is a great space. I've only had drinks and the chocolate bar there, so I can't vouch for the food.

Cafe Spiaggia is another option. They open at 11:30 and the menu is more lunch than brunch. The views and space are great. The food is among the best Italian in the city. Jackets aren't required, but would certainly not be out of place (especially if the other men are dressed similarly).

AngrySarah - perhaps you could be a little more respectful to FoodSnob77's future brother in law. Can't hurt, right?

Darren72 wrote:AngrySarah - perhaps you could be a little more respectful to FoodSnob77's future brother in law. Can't hurt, right?

'goof' seems playful enough in spirit but let's not exceed it, please.

Thanks,

=R=
for the moderators

How about the Signature Room? We went recently and dress is all over the place. I don't remember if I saw any suits, but I don't think it would look strange. I don't know what it says about his confidence level, though. Lunch is actually pretty reasonable there, though the buffet is not very big. You can also order off the menu though.

http://www.signatureroom.com/Home/

While I'm under the impression that brunch is inherently casual (I've been to a handful of "fancy" brunch places while wearing jeans or shorts, and noticed most of the other diners were similarly dressed), I think any of the nicer hotels mentioned throughout this thread (Peninsula, Park Hyatt, Four Seasons) would be your best bet for an excellent brunch where your sister's boyfriend wouldn't feel at all out of place in a suit...after all, among the jeans-and-sandals-wearing, well-heeled tourists, there's bound to be a few high-powered, expense-account bigshots in places like those

Four Seasons is actually a nice guilty pleasure of mine, and the food, considering the breadth, is actually pretty fantastic.

MJN wrote:Four Seasons is actually a nice guilty pleasure of mine

Why guilty?

Does NoMi do breakfast/lunch on Saturday? The bar is pretty casual, but the actual dining room wants suits, I think, even for breakfast/lunch.

SteveZ, Well it is a glorified buffet and mass-cooking experiment put together by a football team of cooks....so by the standard of preferring smaller focused artisanal craft prepared meals and preferring to encourage that kind of restaurant to succeed, I have some minor guilt when I choose the opposite.

leek wrote:Does NoMi do breakfast/lunch on Saturday? The bar is pretty casual, but the actual dining room wants suits, I think, even for breakfast/lunch.

NoMI's main dining room (we were seated in that big, cantilevered bay window that overlooks Michigan Ave.) is actually one of my handful of "fancy" brunch experiences...granted, it was on a Saturday, which might be less formal than Sunday brunch, and was 3 years ago, things might have changed since then. I wore jeans and a short-sleeved button-down (I vividly remember useless details such as this...Superman has his powers, I have mine), and fit right in with the rest of the guests.

These hotels often have breakfast-included room packages (that's why we were there, it was part of a little anniversary "stay-cation"), so a lot of the diners might be weekend hotel guests who didn't bring suits. However, suit-wearing diners would certainly not look out of place, as I'm sure they're in the majority Monday-thru-Friday mornings.

But now that you mention it, I think I did hear something about them cutting costs by only offering the big, fancy brunch buffet spread on Sundays, and sticking to the brunch menu the rest of the week. Or were they shutting down the buffet altogether? I don't remember. What I do remember is that the brunch menu does have some nice options on it (I had eggs benedict with lobster medalions), and is a bit cheaper ($20ish per dish, as opposed to $60ish per person for the monstrous Sunday buffet).

Thinking back, it occurs to me that I wore "dressy" jeans & a dress shirt to NoMI's main dining room (also seated in the overhanging bay window) for dinner the previous night...I probably did stick out like a jacketless rube then

Four Seasons is actually a nice guilty pleasure of mine, and the food, considering the breadth, is actually pretty fantastic.

I also enjoy the Four Seasons, although I'd be remiss in not adding "it used to be better." However, he's looking for a Saturday option and the Four Seasons brunch is Sunday only (although they have a nice a la carte breakfast Saturdays).

leek wrote:Does NoMi do breakfast/lunch on Saturday?

According to their website, they only do breakfast and dinner on Saturday, not lunch or brunch.

According to their website, they only do breakfast and dinner on Saturday, not lunch or brunch.

They call their Saturday breakfast a "brunch", it's just a la carte (pretty similar to their Sunday options, just - potentially - pricier).

http://www.hyatt.com/hyatt/images/hotel ... brunch.pdf

FoodSnob77, the Inter-Continental serves a nice brunch/lunch on Saturday where he wouldn't be out of place in a suit. It served on the second floor mezzanine in the original building. You can either order the buffet or a la carte (& they don't demand that everyone at the table orders the buffet if only one person wants it). There's a good mix of people in everything from casual clothes to business semi-formal even on Saturday since its a popular business hotel, plus the space itself is fairly formal. Food's solid too - I pretty much always order a smoked salmon omelet & fresh berries, but everyone I've entertained there seems to be happy with the selection & its nowhere near as pricey as Four Seasons etc. if that's a consideration.

Tea at the Peninsula. It's the prettiest room because it lets all of the gorgeous light in. The food is substantial. I've worn jeans there but he won't look foolish in a suit there. Stellar service as well.

spinynorman99 wrote:

According to their website, they only do breakfast and dinner on Saturday, not lunch or brunch.

They call their Saturday breakfast a "brunch", it's just a la carte (pretty similar to their Sunday options, just - potentially - pricier).

That's odd. They have a Saturday brunch menu on their website, but when you look at the hours on their website, it says that on Saturdays they are closed between 10:30 am (when they shut down breakfast) and 6 pm (when they start serving dinner).

I just called them. They said that they do indeed serve brunch on Saturdays (11:30-1:30) and the hours posted are wrong in that regard.