Brunch King
Eats, Beats, and Boozy Drinks
Joey Maggiore’s energetic cookbook Brunch King features amplified portions and layers of dazzling flavors.
Maggiore’s’ Hash Kitchen restaurant in Arizona serves up big, boozy drinks, decadent versions of brunch standards, and all the edible gold leaf and extravagant garnishes one can handle. This is a cookbook for celebrations, with vibrant flavors and food stylings broken down in seventy recipes for home cooks to try. The bouncy recipe introductions and zippy playlists from the restaurant’s house DJ complete the festive vibe.
No self-respecting brunch is complete without a juicy cocktail, and the Hash Kitchen versions include a bodacious build-your-own Bloody Mary bar approach with recipes for three kinds of base mixes and garnishes aplenty, including corn dogs and brussels sprouts. The resultant outsized beverages, as pictured, resemble parade floats. Mimosas and coffee drinks get the same glitzy treatment, as do the imaginative and nostalgic, neon-colored drinks fashioned by Maggiore to recreate childhood memories, as of slurping the sugary dregs of the breakfast cereal bowl.
All the brunch favorites are here, elevated with extra flavors, homemade sauces, and toppings. Pancakes and waffles are transformed by dessert flavors like carrot cake and bananas foster, and eggs and potatoes are festooned with fusion bits from Southwestern, Asian, Southern, and Italian cuisines, as with birria hash and blackened shrimp over mascarpone-laden polenta. Such exuberant cooking requires some time in the kitchen, and the final chapter includes patient instructions for concocting green chile hollandaise, brisket, and all the bold-flavored building blocks for the ultimate brunch.
For when a special occasion beckons and calories and cardiologists are not a concern, the Brunch King is the go-to cookbook for your next off-the-charts brunch party.
Reviewed by
Rachel Jagareski
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
